Laying With Lions
by IcarusIscariot
Summary: .:Her hair is a halo of curls that she washes in blood and dries beneath the grimy air of smog at half dusk; she wears it like a crown. She is a queen, wholly and unashamed, and the bruises and the cuts and the broken bones are the price she pays for the crown she wears.:. Hermione's curiosity cannot be sated with apples; things are never as they appear.
1. Prologue - Are You There God?

**Title:** Laying with Lions  
><strong>Author:<strong> IcarusIscariot  
><strong>Categories:<strong> Romance, Angst, Drama, Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy  
><strong>CharactersPairing:** Hermione Granger/Gabriel with confusing undertone of Hermione/Castiel and Hermione/Lucifer; Hermione Granger, Dean Thomas, Anthony Goldstein, a few OC fillers, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jo Harvelle, Ellen Harvelle, Castiel, Gabriel, Michael, Lucifer, Hester, Inias, Samandriel, Metatron, Ezekiel, Gadreel, Thaddeus, Lilith, Meg, Crowley, several other angels and demons - most of which will revolve around theological sources (ex. Raguel; Zadkiel; Samael; Na'amah; Eisheth Zenunim; Agrat Bat Mahlat; and several other classic demons and angels!)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> |SHer hair is a halo of curls that she washes in blood and dries beneath the grimy air of smog at half dusk; she wears it like a crown. She is a queen, wholly and unashamed, and the bruises and the cuts and the broken bones are the price she pays for the crown she wears.| Hermione's curiosity cannot be sated with apples; things are never as they appear.  
><strong>Beta:<strong> None at the moment, I am looking for a new one though!  
><strong>Rated:<strong> M  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Mentions of violence, death of major and secondary character, strong language, lots of angst, possible lemons/limes, slightly vivid descriptions of torture and death in later chapters  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I do not own Harry Potter nor do I own Supernatural. I just enjoy taking it out of the book and playing with the characters.  
><strong>Author Notes:<strong> I was slightly iffy about this chapter, it felt rather lacking when I wrote it, but I needed a prologue chapter for my story. The next chapter will be a little more catch up while being more interactive, so to speak. Basically, you'll be caught up on the happenings of her travels.

**Time Line + Notes**: AU SPN S4 AU straight from the get-go, the third chapter takes place in S3, but she doesn't change anything until the S4; Time line is probably fudged up, date wise, but otherwise it's completely canon complacent; I took liberties with the angels – I'll explain my angel headcanons throughout the story and in author notes in later chapters  
>Major HP B6 AUEWE- the war lasts for several years; Notable deaths of the Weasley family, Harry Potter, Dumbledore, Luna Lovegood, Neville Longbottom, Patil twins, Seamus Finnegan, Susan Bones, Lavender Brown, Cho Chang and a few others; Harry being a horcrux issue isn't really touched up on in this fic and for that I'm sorry –v–" ; Powerful witches and wizards can see angle wings, they can also hear/understand an angle's true voice; Anthony Goldstein is crippled; Dean Thomas is the voice of reason/morals/compassion for the most part, also, he's a sarcastic fuck 76% of the time; BAMF!Hermione, Author!Hermione, SexuallyConfident!Hermione and MorallyAmbiguous!Hermione

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong> – _Are You There, God?_

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><p>Hermione owns a Bible; her father gave it to her when she was nine. She read it out of curiosity and while she never physically spoke about it, the scriptures were always somewhere in the back of her ever racing mind.<p>

She liked Jesus, she liked him a lot.

As a nine year old girl who could make her dresses change colors and set things on fire during a particularly bad temper tantrum, something about the miracle weaving son of God appealed to her. She likes to think that Jesus sent an angel to watch over her, because whenever she would cause the windows to shatter or something equally dangerous, there was always a slight shimmer in the corner of her eye and the flapping of wings as the glass repaired itself.

When she arrived at Hogwarts, she read her worn black book again and thought: _Jesus was probably just a wizard_. She closed her book and never read it again for several years, yet, it stayed with her at all times – whether in her book sack or beaded bag or even shrunk and hidden in her pocket. Regardless, of her belief in the book, it seemed _wrong_ to discard it so carelessly, so she treated like she would any book, with the upmost respect.

The next time she opens her bible since coming to Hogwarts is a week after the Battle at the Department of Mysteries. She was gravely injured in the fight, but not before she watched Sirius fall into the veil and Harry run after Bellatrix.

Hermione killed someone that night.

She learned something very important; she learned that a great and terrible person can indeed be overcome by one relatively weak and inexperienced. It seemed to be a crime of the highest degree that it was _she_ who killed Tankurus Nott with a well-placed _Reducto_ and not someone on par with his admittedly impressive skills. Nott was a very formidable man, she had learned after scouring the Black library for what she could find on him, a man who had dedicated himself to the creation of ward-making and, apparently, muggle-born killing.

Circumstance was the greatest lesson she learned as she walked, or rather was pulled, out from the halls of the DoM. She found that anyone, no matter how powerful, cannot prepare for every circumstance, no matter how many years they put into preparing and protecting themselves. She discovered that there is always a circumstance that can and will overcome even the greatest, brightest and most skilled, and more importantly, that circumstance does not require an equal opponent.

This lesson was drilled into her head as the year progressed.

Fred was the first one, after Sirius, to go and it wasn't in wild blaze of glory the twins had discussed with the trio over a bottle of Oden's Finest. No, it, sadly, did not include the three strippers or the polka-dotted Nundu or even the hula hoop. It happens behind the dumpsters of the joke shop, because Voldemort smartly decided that the twin's inventions are too dangerous to him. Fred had taken out the trash when the Death Eater struck; Fred was dead before he could pull wand.

George finds his cooling body ten minutes later; the trio arrive the next, because the twins have missed an Order Meeting. They find their entwined bodies on the grimy alley stones and for a heart breaking moment, Hermione thinks both are dead. George had positioned Fred's body with their legs tangles and arms around each other. George wouldn't let go and Fred was incapable of letting go, but Hermione firmly thinks that Fred wasn't the only one incapable.

(They may have ripped George away from Fred's rigid body, but parts of George, the ones that matter, died alongside his twin in that filthy alleyway.)

The second to go is Alastor Moody with Minerva McGonagall not far behind; they die minutes apart during a surprise attack while attempting to move the Dursley and her own family to safety. Unfortunately, among the causalities of her two mentors were the members of both muggle families. Remus is the one that brings back her parents' wedding bands for a memento.

It broke Hermione's heart.

Hermione is barely seventeen when the Weasley death toll rises from one to three.

Bill is the unfortunate victim of an attack on Gringotts, in an attempt to prevent the Goblins from destroying the horcrux they had confiscated from the Lestrange vault. They find Bill's broken body in a pool of his own blood; he is curled around himself, the golden goblet hidden inside the ruined leather of his jacket. There is something morbidly beautiful about Bill's death, almost poetic, his long red ponytail unfurled behind him and sticky with coagulated blood, and a small smile on his face.

The blood stains the soles of her boots maroon, the dragon hide never returns to its pervious color and shine.

Two days later they find Percy's body in the rubble of what used to be the counting chamber, clutched in his arms is a thin black notebook. Written neatly inside is a list of Death Eaters and possible ways to cut off their money flow, influence and/or power. She feels like that every twisted bone that broke his skin and every bruise on his pasty skin, is a message: You can't save everyone; you can't save anyone.

Both are buried on the family plot, across from Fred as the family had an unspoken agreement about the space beside him. It was for George.

Two weeks later Dumbledore dies after facing off with Voldemort head to head. He is buried in a pure white, marble coffin. Harry is terrified when he approaches her during the funeral. "If Dumbledore can't win," he murmurs, "how can I?"

(Later that night Hermione takes a handful of pills and hallucinates about a faceless man of pure white with six wings and twenty eyes sitting on the edge of her bed; his wings are russet and remind her of tree bark. She wants to touch them, feel them beneath her fingertips, but instead she lies her head down on the couch cushions and closes her sleepy, falling into a blissfully dreamless slumber.)

Ron is the next to die, it's a surprise raid. Harry and Hermione react violently when the killing curse hits their best friend, their other third. Within minutes the rest of the Death Eaters are dead. They use Ron's murderer to help them master the use of the Cruciatus Curse before disposing of him as carelessly as he did with Ron.

(She can't bear to use her wand for the next week.)

The Patil twins die next, the scene takes place in a muggle dinner two blocks from her childhood home, but her parents are dead, so it doesn't matter, not really. When Hermione and Harry arrive, wands at the ready, they find the scattered bodies of Death Eaters and Muggles alike. Among the corpses are Padma and Parvati. The only sound left is the crackly radio by the cash register, rasping out "you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. . ."

Looking back on it, Hermione can say with certain clarity: It was the most melodramatic death she had ever seen.

(George stumbles into Hermione's room later that night. _That should have been me and Fred_, he slurs drunkenly, _it's not fucking fair_. Hermione involuntarily agrees: Fred died alone; it was _unfair_, George should have died, too. She feels a wave of guilt at the thought – not for thinking it, but for it being _true_ – and takes it upon herself to put the drunkard to bed.)

Charlie is a natural flier, the best Hermione had ever encountered, and as a dragon-tamer he had something a thousand times better to ride than a broom. The year is 1998 and, officially, the war has been going on for almost three years. The golden-_duo_ has begun to take out horcruxes whenever possible, but they're focused, entirely too focused, on simply keeping their people, their family alive. Charlie goes out in the blaze of glory he never wanted. But Fred did, Hermione remembers. He wanted to wreak havoc of Voldemort's plans, wanted to mark and leave his mark on the world. He didn't just want to shake up the system, he wanted to fucking _destroy_ it. (_Ironic_, Harry tells her after the battle, in the dingy muggle pub they're staying at, and Hermione is forced to agree. But as a hero, Hermione has won the right to find death ironic and has lost the ability to lie to herself.) Charlie and his friends change the tide of the war and deliver the Order a crucial win on the backs of their dragons. It takes twenty-seven unforgivable and a well-aimed _Oculacero_ to bring him down. He free-falls twenty meters to his death.

(The funeral is closed casket.)

The week after Charlie's noble sacrifice, a small Death Eater raid on a small apothecary, rightfully, suspected of supplying the Order with potion ingredients turns deadly when they find Remus and his five month pregnant mate in the back room. Snape breaks ranks and dies beside Remus, a hero in his own right. Tonks manages to apparate back to Headquarters, but ultimately suffers a miscarriage and succumbs to her injuries not long after.

Molly is three months after Tonks, and Hermione feels guilty because it's the first time a death makes her happy- _relieved_. She dies in the middle of the night and everyone is blessed that there isn't a new vicious death to fuel their nightmares and push them that much closer to breaking. Arthur follows the next day of a broken heart, and if she hadn't lost an almost father she would think it sweet.

(The man returns that night and watches her as she visits and leaves flowers on Ron's grave, but she is too consumed with grief to care.)

Four months later and a small gather of the Order's espionage unit is leaked – Hermione can't help, but laugh at the fucking _irony_ of the whole thing – and three of their agents are buried. Hermione holds Dean Thomas as he sobs on her shoulder as his fiancée and his best friend are buried in the Order's cemetery- a small plot Hermione has hidden and warded deep in the heart of the Epping Forest. Hermione casts one final look at the graves- Susan R. Bones, Seamus H. Finnegan, Nigel Y. Wolbert- before leaving the burial ground.

She doesn't bother to linger for very long; she knows it's only a matter of time before she's forced to return.

It turns out the spy is no other than Hannah Longbottom née Abbott. She manages to take out Ernest Macmillan and Anthony Goldstein's legs and entire left side with a nasty combination of burning and bludgeoning curses before Cho is able to stun and bind her. The damage is outside of both Luna and Hermione's healing abilities, while they manage to save his life, Anthony loses his ability to walk and winds up with disfiguring burns across his face and torso.

Ginny – precious Ginevra – is the next to die, on mission she was captured- they send Order members pieces of her for days. Something in Harry finally _breaks_ on the third day; he incinerates the box without looking inside.

Hermione knows that the end is coming.

Six, nearly seven, years of have passed and Hermione has begun to full embrace her vices – her lust, gluttony and _wrath_. She sleeps with men and women, overindulges in hard liquors and cheap, fermented wines. Harry doesn't talk about it, how far they have all fallen, because he understand sin and anger are all she can cling to that won't fucking leave her in the end. There is _nothing_, but _transgression_ to embrace.

George, at the age of 25, is the last Weasley alive and he hates himself, hates the fact he can't get himself killed and hates the fact he's too cowardly to end it all. He no longer jokes of pranks, or even drinks; he fights with terrifying accuracy, callous cruelty and Hermione can't remember if he's always slaughtered so mindlessly or if it's a new thing.

The night before the final battle Harry approaches a drunken Neville and a stony faced Hermione. The witch doesn't bother asking if he wants some, as she pours him his own tumbler of whiskey. They toasted to "ending it all." Three hours later and Harry and Neville had drunk themselves stupid and had left it up to Hermione to get them back to bed.

After putting them to bed, she pulls out the scruffy Bible from her bag and for the first time in her life, gets down on her knees and prays.

The day Hermione's life inadvertently changes is a Tuesday; the date is July 17, 2001 and it's the day Harry finally meets Voldemort on the battlefield for the last time. They die meters apart in a blast of red and green. When the dust settles and Hermione walks calmly to the two carcasses and strokes the chilling cheek of her best friend, wiping the grim and ash from his fair skin. She is vaguely happy for and envious of Harry, he finally did it – he finally won. (Later, she arranges for Harry to be buried on the Weasley family plot, between Ron and Ginny. His tombstone is white marble and proclaims in a flowing script, "Harry James Potter, Friend, Family, Lover and Hero: 1980-2001.")

The battle is not without its other casualties: she finds Luna Lovegood's body parts slewed and tossed every which way across the castle's proper. Hermione notes, with a twitch of her lips, that Luna dismembered head still has a dreamy smile playing at her bluing lips- _she's missing a fucking eye, but not her trademark smile_, she thinks darkly. There is the mushy, pinkness of someone's brains sticking to her boots; she hopes, begs, to every deity her huge mind knows, that it's doesn't belong to Luna.

Neville died in blaze of fire in the early stages of the battle, entering the fields of martyrdom when he grabbed Nagini and set the both of them on fire using a modified version of _Fiendfyre_. Hermione wished that a simple killing curse would suffice, but Voldemort had prepared his pet for such an attack and with the Gryffindor sword had been seized by Voldemort's Death Eaters five months prior when they captured Oliver Wood, who had been in charge of disposing of the Diadem recently acquired by Draco Malfoy. Luckily he had properly destroyed the horcrux before the evitable capture and death of both their officer and spy.

So, sadly, Neville's sacrifice had been as essential to winning the battle as Lily Potter's had been to Harry's survival – in other words, completely and utterly necessary.

To the far left of the field was a body, a pretty woman all things considered, with her shirt torn open and her face frozen in an expression of pain. Her pants had been ripped in places and pulled down to reach her knees, visible white liquid drying on her discolored thigh; not far from her final resting place was a man, no doubt her rapist and killer, with his pants half down, a huge bloodied gash crossing his chest. Hermione walked over with the purpose of clothing the body, but when she realizes the woman is Cho Chang, Hermione is filled with something just short of anger before quickly redressing the dead woman and incarnating the already lifeless culprit with a flick of her wrist.

Not far from the beautiful Ravenclaw is the mauled carcass of Lavender Brown. The witch stepped forward without looking, her eyes locked on the corpse of her friend, and slipped on the Gryffindor's detached liver, she narrowly avoided her face coming in contact with the stone floor of the castle by catching her falling body with her hands.

She can feel the bile rising from her throat and she wants to _scream_ for someone, _anyone_, to help her swim, because she's fucking _drowning_. (The blood never truly washes away and the scars never fade; Hermione is tired of fighting against the current.)

Instead she wipes the fleshy tissue and blood on her the jeans of her pants and merino wool of her black sweater. She pauses in her motion for only a moment and thinks, loudly and viciously, about how tired of wearing black she is. She wears black robes to funerals and black leather skirmishes and Order meetings. She wears black from head to toe – black socks, black knickers, black shirts, black boots and black pants – just to make the laundry simpler, easier.

She hates black, she thinks.

(After her realization, she burns everything black she owns and replaces with Red, gold, green and blue versions. The only thing untouched is her old bible.)

A week after the battle, Hermione is unsurprised when she hears the Auror knock at the door of her inherited mansion (from an old well-wisher who wanted to make life easier on one the world's last remaining heroes). "Miss Granger," the wizard chokes out, his body standing at attention, "It's Mr. Weasley…"

He doesn't say _I have bad news_, because in war everything is no news or bad news, eight days isn't an adequate recovery period to fix that. Regardless, it isn't bad news. Not to Hermione.

She's relieved – _glad_ – that George has finally died.

The war is over, they can rebuild, but somehow Hermione can't find it inside herself to _care_.

Everyone she has surrounded herself with for years is dead. However, Hermione is alive – miraculously _alive _somehow, and she _really_ likes and hates the feeling all at the same time. She is numb as fuck (she can't feel a damn thing, including her face), but _alive_.

And that is something, isn't it? That is a victory, isn't it?

She has fought the good fight and lived to tell the tale and none of the Weasleys or Harry can say the same. None of her friends can, actually.

She is the last hero left, and it leaves a sharp, cold bite in her once warm eyes and bitterness deep in her bloodstream. Her face is flawless, unchanging marble and her tongue is poised to cut down any and everyone who cannot keep up with her genius or dares approach her with their stupid awed-looks or worshiped whispers. She wants the stupid "are you alright"s to fucking _stop_. Her family is gone and her friends are dead, of course she isn't _okay_.

She's twenty-one going on fucking _Dumbledore_, and can't remember why they were fighting for anymore. She can't remember the dreams she had about an idea wizarding world, something about freedom and happiness, she supposes. Regardless, she'd much rather leave the rebuilding to Kingsley.

Hermione has given too much to this world; she has paid her dues.

So, Hermione decides, on a whim, to sit for her N.E.W.T.s. Even though she never even made it to her sixth year, she still gets the best scores in two centuries, beating out even the infamous Tom Marvolo Riddle, a fact she is un-endlessly proud of. After receiving her scores, she visits Kingsley with a rather simple request.

Four hours and several liberally applied memory charms later, and Hermione Granger had officially passed her A-levels at the age of twelve and became the proud recipient of a doctorate in Physics, two master degrees in Literature and Criminal Justice, and a B.A. in Psychology all by the age of twenty.

As it was, Hermione had always been fascinated with physics; it explained things with a precision that truly appealed to her studious side. While magical theory outlined and identified magical behaviors, levitation or healing for example, they were satisfied with just knowing what magic could and could not do. Witches and wizards didn't seem to care _why_or _how _it could do something and not others; they seemed quite content in simply saying magic was _magic_ and calling it a day. Even Hermione's beloved Arithmancy and Potions, lacked the same drive that muggle sciences had.

In harsh comparison, in physics things weren't simply observed and noted, they were systematically broken down, tested, identified and tested again. Gravity, for example, wasn't simply the unsaid force of attraction acting between two objects, it was broken down into a geometric _property_ brought on by the curvature of space and time, and distilled into a mathematical formula of general relativity.

It was positively brilliant, really.

Physics was, in all honestly, _soothing;_a genuine pathway to serenity to Hermione. Running her mind through various theorems and equations was absolute heaven for her frayed nerves, and it offered a stability that her personal life, quite frankly, lacked. It gave her direction she hadn't had since Hogwarts.

As it was, physics was truly a passion of hers, it tried to wholly understand nature; unfortunately, it lacked the full picture, the magical properties of the equation that hid a countless amount of variables. Research that she had put off for years had been reopened and Hermione quickly put together ways to harness both principals into comprehensible results.

Needless to say, Hermione had decided to publish her first book on the subject, which had firmly cemented her deep within the scientific community as both a prodigy and genius.

Not satisfied with her success, Hermione began to write accounts of her time in war while, smartly, adapting it to fit into muggle ideas. Her stories became a nine part series.

The books revolved around three teenagers fighting against a corrupt government that eventually turned into a full blown war. Harry Potter became Harold Colt, the son of two rich business men who were killed while protesting for LGBT equality; he fought for his rights alongside his best friend, Ronnie Tucker, a ginger-haired police officer with a habit of letting his emotions get the better of him. Hermione, herself, became Helena Puckle, a talented, young attorney with a major law firm who loved to read and was willing to lose life and limb for her two friends.

True to life, Hermione killed off Ronnie in gang related violence while Harold died trying to disarm a bomb, killing himself and main villain in the consequent explosion. Helena mourned for the entirety of the eight book while slowly becoming more and more twisted, eventually becoming the new villain herself. She murdered with precision, but so kindly that one would wish to go by her hand; she manipulated so sweetly that even the most twisted, depraved and stubborn souls would happily fly into her sugar-coated web. Everything she did had an ulterior motive: she wanted vengeance, at first; she wanted peace, in the end.

The book series ended with her dying by poisoning at the hand of her lover, Tyomas Simmons, who she had recently admitted to being in love with. He had dipped her tea bags into the extract of the extremely toxic Oleander; she died less than ten minutes after her first sip.

Aside from her interest in writing and science, Hermione had been willed Colin's camera after the war – originally everything was to go to Dennis, but as Dennis had followed him to grave a mere twenty minutes later, Hermione had ultimately received it as Colin wanted everything he owned to go to either his brother or the highest ranking muggleborn in the Order.

It had started with a single photograph left on the undeveloped film, a snow covered tree with the light hitting the shot just so, causing the ice crystals to sparkle in the sunlight. After studying the photograph, Hermione had picked up the camera and begun to snap photos, hoping to catch such a beautiful moment herself.

Quickly Hermione becomes borderline obsessed with the idea, carrying the camera in her handbag where ever she went or occasionally around her neck. She still kept writing and researching just as much as she normally did, but now her free time was spent looking at the world through a lens. Hermione now understood why Colin always seemed to prefer it to looking at the cold hard truth, through the flashing lens Hermione felt safer than she had in a very long while.

Yet, something was _still_ missing.

For months Hermione was followed by an utter _empty_ feeling, it was that vacant sensation that forced Hermione into making the decision to travel the world.

She had the money to go to explore the globe while living in the lap of luxury for several lifetimes. She had been willed fortune after fortune, manors and properties, libraries, family portraits and even more fortunes.

Before she leaves; Hermione takes out her tattered, old Bible and decides, in that moment, that faith is worhtless.

She throws the book into her fireplace and watches it burn.

She leaves the next day.

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><p><strong>Please Review! It helps me update faster.<strong>


	2. Lamentation for the Birds

**Just an FYI, but the next chapter update will probably take a while to update. Since I'm, also, writing a Criminal Minds/Harry Potter Crossover with a Blind!Hermione main character, I'm not sure about shipping in it, but I've had the idea for a long time.**

**If you have any advice or thoughts on that I'd love to hear them.**

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><p>Another mainly fillersummary chapter, while being much more interactive than the last; the majority of the story will be taking place in the SPN side of things, so I want to clear up + give back story on some things before they start.

This chapter takes place during season 2 of Supernatural.

I got the idea for the site from Sarhea's "_Self Exile_", look it up! It's an amazing short fic.  
>After reading it I actually had the idea for this fic, I really adored the idea of Hermione helping out hunters in her own slightly indifferent way by providing them with lore. I decided to keep it in this fic by twisting it to where it's Anthony's brain child that his friends help him with occasionally.<p>

Hermione is rather aphetic when it comes to people other than Dean and Anthony, but you oly truly get to see it after this and maybe the next chapter. Please bear with me as I give you this worthless building bullshit. ;v;/

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><p>Chapter One – Lamentation for the Birds<p>

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><p>Grunting with effort, Hermione clung to the trunk of a particularly stubby Brazil Nut tree, fortunately it was no more than twenty-six meters up. Unfortunately, the tree had no braches for several meters, forcing Hermione to use more unconventional means to scale the tree.<p>

For nearly two _hours_ she had applied and replied a modified sticking charm to her gloved hands and boots, and had ascended that way. For not the first time, Hermione cursed her inability to simply apparate straight to the top of the overgrown shrubbery, but _no_ there was too high of a chance of appearing with a branch impaled in your stomach. Call her crazy, but Hermione had absolutely no desire to end up a witch-kebab.

Luckily, the branches were only a meter or so above her, taunting her tense muscles with their pleasant rustling and nesting Rufous Horneros. _Damn them and their intelligence_, Hermione thought bitterly. _And damn them for putting so much effort into the continuation of their species_, she put it as an afterthought. Bird or no, what creature in its right mind would spend weeks carrying mug and dung thirty meters up a tree to create their nest?

Grumbling about valuable eggs and stupidly clever birds, Hermione carefully crossed the final meter between her and the branches above, once reached she perched herself on a particularly sturdy limb.

The witch unwound her aching muscles the best she could while remaining firmly beside the taupe tinted trunk, one arm was snaked around said trunk at all times to keep her from potentially falling from her high perch. Falling from this height would, no doubt, shatter and dislocate several bones, and handicaps of any kind could and would mean becoming an all-you-can-eat-buffet either for the bugs or the larger predators, most likely a mixture of the two. Not something she particularly wanted to experience.

There were simply too many hidden dangers lurking in the thick forage and murky waters to put her body at more risk than absolutely necessary. Over the past week she had almost been snapped in half by a Black Caiman while attempting to procure a Pacu from the depths of river. Needless to say it was not an incident she was willing to repeat anytime soon.

But the Amazonian river creatures weren't the only danger she face in the dense rainforest- bullet ants covered the jungle floors in the hundreds and suffice to say, they live up to their name. As it turns out anaconda weren't nearly as terrifying as coming in contact with a jaguar for the first time. She may have lived through a war and then traveled the world, participating in some of the most dangerous actions a witch or wizard could do, but stumbling upon a huge man-eating cat was still terrifying beyond belief.

While the Amazon Rain forest was one of the more dangerous places she had been, it wasn't the most treacherous terrain she had traveled in the past handful of years- in fact she had made a career of it. Hermione Granger, War Heroine turned muggle author turned famous Potions Mistress in her spare time, traveled the globe gathering rare and sometimes controversial potion ingredients.

When she finally upped and left England she decided to accept a potions apprenticeship under a renowned master in Norway, an eccentric man who reminded her of Mr. Lovegood, who insisted to be called Golbert.

After six months under Golbert's expert, albeit slightly strange, tutorage Hermione had flourished greatly. Sadly he had sent her off to perfect her style under an old colleague before allowing her to take her mastery exam. As it turned out the colleague was a fiery Swedish woman, who was quickly approaching the ripe age of a hundred and twenty-seven, named Talia.

Another five months under Talia had found Hermione beyond qualified for the job of potions mistress –the years she had spent brewing for the Order and the additional time under her masters, had honed in her already brilliant gift in potions into near prodigal levels. The young witch was easily able to fulfill the requirements for her mastery license, becoming the youngest potions mistress recognized in nearly seven centuries.

A week later and Hermione had traveled to France to visit her two remaining friend. Dean Thomas, who had become a well-known artist in both the magical and muggle world, had purchased a home outside of Paris where he lived with the now crippled Anthony Goldstein. The disfigured wizard had become an extremely gifted linguist, mastering nearly sixty languages ten of which were nearly dead, and a famous master in the field of Runic magic.

Less than four months later Hermione had convinced the two to come with her on her travels. Together they scoured the Earth for rare potion ingredients for Hermione, untranslated tombs for Anthony and subject matter for Dean's paintings. They had consulted dozens of people- everyone from Roman priests who practiced the ways of old to squibs turned scientist. With every trip the trio picked up something new, whether it be a new language, business contact, technique or something else entirely- it didn't matter to the three friends, they were simply happy traveling together.

During their time the three had plucked up dozens of languages to add to their arsenal; in the nearly four years they had spent abroad Hermione had mastered twenty-seven while Dean had almost twenty-three under his belt, but neither measured up to Anthony's four-eight, which brought his grand total well over a hundred.

Anthony's language skills had saved their lives numerous times, for instance in the mountains of Nepal, Dean had gotten it into his head to flirt with a particularly mean Yuki Onna, Japanese frost spirits that had fled their homeland in favor of the snowy caves of the mainland. Luckily, Anthony had been able to communicate their desire to learn from them and that, no, they weren't there to destroy their homes and rape their daughters. In the end, the trio had gained the knowledge of primal magiks, focusing on ice conjuring and control, and while the skill was hard for all three of them to harness, they were able to employ it quite well with enough practice.

While another time her sandy haired friend had kept a high priestess from sacrificing Hermione to her supreme goddess. Surprisingly the woman had spoken Tanema, a nearly extinct language, where and why Anthony had picked up the dying speech was unknown to both her and Dean, but nonetheless greatly appreciated. Hermione had been pleasantly surprised when the woman was willing to teach the group her ancient potions and just how absolutely _versatile_ some ingredients really could be.

An excursion in Tunisia had the trio staying a settlement of medicine men and women boasting millennia of healing magiks using runes and the elements; while another trip to Libya held a grand spiritual awakening for the trio, there they had met some of the last genuine shaman. Each time Anthony had acted as a translator between his friends and their mentors.

Regardless, language barriers weren't the only dangers the three had run into during their time around.

There had been dozens of close calls over the years, the most notable being the mishap in the glow caves in New Zealand. It seems that not only did the caverns boast a hoard of glowing creepy-crawlies; the caves also had a huge population of sea serpents. While fresh water serpents could only get a few meters in length, their jaws were strong enough to rip apart and sink smaller boats. While attempting to find a low laying area, so she could scrap the ceiling of the cave for the magically rich sludge that formed on the top in thin layers, Hermione's boat had been shattered into bits. It was only her quick wand work and an affinity to mid air apparition that had saved her from the cave's deadly pools.

Her bad luck with sea serpents followed over to the trio's trip to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam; there they had found an actually basilisk and sea serpent hybrid, who had seemingly inherited the size and eyesight of its father and the swimming abilities of its mother. Needless to say, the three had high tailed it out of there and notified the country's ministry and never came back. It had been too bad, in her opinion, the bay had been beautiful.

The danger hadn't ended with sea serpents; no, the group had traveled to Greece for what was supposed to be a fun vacation, but ended up being a six month training period where the trio had learn to harvest live chimera. It was not a skill any of them expected to gain, but like with everything they put their mind to; they flourished at it and greatly appreciated their added skill. Shortly after Hermione had traded out her impractical beaded bag for a cream hued, canvas rucksack, in which chimera scales, blood and venom became a constant resource within.

Not everything had been danger after danger though, they had spent a time in Greenland gathering rare and exotic mushrooms, while Dean visited his distant grandmother- the only one in his family to have survived the war. The Luminescent Collybia had become essential in strengthening the wolfsbane potion, whist the Exuiduis Likiuns, purple underground truffle, could be boiled and mashed into a paste that could be used as a pain reliever.

Another time had been at the Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skype just off the coast of Scotland. They had traveled there attempting to gather the rocks on bottom of the pools, which were made from the sedimentation of particles over the course of centuries; the stones had stored the potent healing properties of the waters. They were usually used in cases of infertility caused by trauma or blindness; the fairy dust had mixed in with the water's natural healing properties and made one of the world's most potent healing springs in existence. In the end they had left two weeks later, taking both her newly acquired rocks and vials with her.

They hadn't just traveled the natural landmarks of the world either, Dean's carrier as an artist had them visiting major art capitals of the world and larger cities where he was required to be for art shows and gallery opening.

The most notable being when Dean had demanded that they go to Berlin for a huge art show that boasted several pieces of his collection entitled, _Birds of a Feather, Fight Together_. Hermione had been absolutely mesmerized and stunned by the paintings and their subjects.

"Martyr" had depicted a couple sitting on the stoop of a small cottage; the woman leaned against the taller man, a blue bundle with tufts of wayward black hair sticking out every which way, was clutched lovingly in her arms. The copper haired beauty's head was tucked safely in the nook of the man's shoulder; said man was glancing at the newborn baby with pure adoration and happiness.

While "Prophet" had boasted a slender girl with straggly dirty blonde hair framing her thin face and wide, silvery blue eyes, a dreamy smile gracing her pretty features. While she didn't bother with shoes, she did wear a gaudy anklet in the likeness of a hare; her jewelry did not end there with her butterbeer cork necklace, beetle ring and radish earrings, a pair of spectrespecs perched on top her head. Playfully dressed in a green skirt and blue blouse contrasted by the puffy sleeved, green and yellow jacket she coupled it with, the girl leaned towards the audience with her head cocked to the left.

Hermione had fought to keep her emotions under wraps at the sight of her friends, friends she had tried to forget. Yet, she found herself stroking the cheek of a painted man with vivid green eyes and a face splitting grin. Upon his nose a pair of circular glasses almost concealed by his mop of messy black locks; a dirty cloak around his shoulders and a stone ring on his left hand while a stick was clutched in his right, the wand was long with masses reminiscent of elder berries running down its length. She had fought the urge to steal the painting and never let it go, but eventually she allowed the wheelchair bound Anthony to drag her away.

Two weeks in Berlin had found Anthony completely enamored by a halfblooded beauty by the name of Leanne Pyrites who had been a Hufflepuff two years above them. Her pureblood father and muggleborn mother had taken her deep into the heart of Germany to avoid the pressures of her father's brother, a Death Eater known for having worn permanently blood-stained gloves.

Both Hermione and Dean were suspicious at first, but it more out of their protectiveness of Anthony rather than mistrust of Leanne. The Hufflepuff had been extremely outspoken in her outrage about the Muggleborn Registration Commission as it affected her mother. In the end, her father had been able to smuggle his wife out of the country using muggle means before following her shortly thereafter with their teenage daughter and toddler son. Hermione rather liked the girl, but had been resolute in her resolve: If the witch hurt Anthony, Hermione would make sure her body was never found again.

In the end both of the muggleborns had been pleasantly surprise at just how wonderful she truly was. Neither of the concerned parties had ever found a sliver of pity in her grey orbs when gazing upon Anthony's partially scared face. Leanne had instead sat across from him and listened to him speak for hours – memorized his every regret and every mistake – and at the end of his story she had accepted him with open arms. After that day not a moment passed without either one ogling the other, within a month the two had become serious and Hermione could safely say that she trusted Leanne with her friend's heart and to a lesser extent her own life.

In the end Hermione and Dean had left Germany with expectedly heavy hearts, but were otherwise overjoyed for their friend. Anthony was finally happy and that was all that mattered.

Three moons later and not a fortnight went by without Anthony receiving at least one weekend long visit; quickly the trio had become a quartet, but none of them were complaining. Anthony's girlfriend was witty and smart while being almost as loyal as Anthony, she challenged Anthony in ways the academic Hermione and the sarcastic Dean could not. Instead of the heated debates that he and Hermione had, the two settled into a clever commentary, and in comparison to Dean and Anthony's often misinterpreted meanings, Leanne needed no words to convey her every thought to Anthony. She matched his intellect with her own, without overpowering or simply yielding to it him like Hermione and Dean were known to do.

Another three months had passed before Anthony proposed- Hermione thought it a bit fast, but she had never seen her friend so happy, so smartly kept her mouth shut – and within the year they were happily married. Dean had been Anthony's best man while Hermione had been asked to be Leanne's maid of honor. The wedding had been beautiful.

Another six months of traveling passed before Dean had found a woman of his own, a French muggleborn who had become classical musician with a natural talent for the viola. Hermione had stayed long enough to see them move into Dean's all but abandoned home two miles outside of Paris, before bidding the couple adieu and continuing with her travels.

Nearly two months had passed since she lost both of her traveling companions and each day only got harder and harder. Hermione found it increasingly difficult to jump from place to place and seriously considered the benefits of settling down.

The pros had greatly outweighed the cons in Hermione's opinion.

So, this was, in fact, her last excursion before moving into her newly purchased home on the outskirts of an American town named Jasper Springs in Mississippi. She had chosen the place by spinning a globe and stopping it blindly with her eyes closed, her finger had stopped on Mississippi. She had then repeated the general idea of the action once more on a detailed map of the southern state.

She had jumped at purchasing a home and found a charming, but extremely dated Dutch Colonial house.

While the home had both a spacious basement and loft, Hermione had found herself nearly overloaded with the sheer space of the five bed room home. She had decided to turn one of the rooms into a potions lab, while using three of the bedrooms for her, Dean and Anthony leaving the last one to be used a guest bedroom. The house had three full bathrooms, one on ground level between the library and den while the other two had been strategically placed around smaller bedrooms, as the master room had an adjoining bathroom. The other rooms included a spacious kitchen, dining room and room for entertaining.

The house was gorgeous even with its dated exterior, but she had easily called a contractor to fix up and change to her standards. She'd do it herself, but even the thickest of Muggles would notice an old house being fixed up within a night.

The house itself had cost a very sizable sum, but with the renovations included, the home had cost Hermione a small fortune, not that she was complaining. She had more money than she would ever have a need for and she was more than happy to send any amount, if it provided her with a home she could be honestly happy living in.

The sound of birds singing to her left pulled Hermione from her thoughts, with a quick look at the sky Hermione realized it was late afternoon and the sun would be setting within the hour.

Cursing her drawn out musings, Hermione pulled herself to the next branch, before slithering her body up the trunk to the next branch that was slight out of her arm span. Twenty minutes of hard climbing in three splinters later, Hermione had finally reached the nest that had taken up the latter part of her day.

Feeling slightly guilty for stealing the bird's offspring, Hermione only took one of the two eggs in the nest, magically protecting the egg from breaking Hermione slipped it into the side pocket of her rucksack with the rest of her bounty from the day.

Once finished with the extraction Hermione took the camera hanging around her neck and poised it against her eye. Angling herself just so, Hermione snapped a picture of the overlooking jungle. Hermione let the camera hang carelessly around her neck once more before she apparated back the small hut she had magiked on the outskirts of the jungle.

Walking into the raised hovel, Hermione placed her bag on the simple cot she had placed in the corner of the one room shack. She hadn't bothered enlarging the inside as she wasn't planning on spending much time in the humid environment and the jungle was filled with magic sensitive beings. While apparating was alright, as it didn't use huge amounts of drawn out magic to attempt, enlarging a whole building for any given time would no doubt attract a handful of beasts throughout her stay. She was honestly lucky that she had learned wards that she could viably use without detection by animals during her short jaunt in Benin.

Tightening her ponytail with a halfhearted yank, Hermione spread out her spoils of the day on her bed. She had raided five two-egg-filled nests and a single nest holding three eggs, she had made sue to leave at least one egg in each nest, leaving her with a whopping total of seven eggs all together. She placed the strongest unbreakable charms she knew before individually wrapping them the muggle way in layers of thick, soft wool then rewrapping them in an extra layer of charmed linen. Pulling a small, velvet lined box from her bag, Hermione placed each wrapped egg into the box, adding sticking charms to the bottoms of each to prevent more movement than needed before charming the box itself. She gently placed the sealed container back into her pack before walking to her enlarged desk a few feet from her basic cot to see if anyone had called while she was out.

Usually any messages on her phone would be from her muggleborn friends with the occasional halfblood mixed in. Dean or Anthony would update her on the happenings in Europe weekly, for which she would be forever grateful for, and occasionally Lee Jordan, who had taken over the twins' joke shop, would hit her up with a request for certain ingredients or an update himself. Often Talia would call Hermione, using her archaic candlestick styled rotary phone, to afternoon tea, of course the young witch always accepted.

She didn't have many friends as the war had taken most of them from her, but the few who did survive had made it a point to learn how to use muggle mobile phones as it was much faster than floo or patronus and after the war, the faster warnings could reach you, the better. Most of her messages were, however, not from her friends from England, but from the ones she had met during her travels. She received dozens of messages from muggleborns and halfbloods, with the occasional squib helping their pureblood family member, who wanted her opinion on projects, papers and the like.

Scrolling through her messages, Hermione opened and replied to a multitude of texts and emails. She had never been as thankful for her magic providing her with service and wifi excess on her phone where ever she happened to be, as she was in that moment.

One email did grab her attention, however, a forwarded message from someone named requesting lore on Amabies.

While it was not a rare occurrence to receive emails asking for information since Anthony had began running an online research and translation service specializing in witchcraft, the occult, obscure languages and the like. However, she had never once received a message asking about Amabies. Sirens and mermaids? Of course, but never Amabie. In fact she very scarcely could recall ever reading anything of true worth about them outside from a few referenced passages.

The message had been forwarded to her by Anthony; he probably hadn't found anything in his obscure volumes of text, so had sent it to her for more research. Playing with the idea of breaking out her books and answering the request for a moment, Hermione ultimately decided herself much too tired to attempt answering the message.

She instead forwarded the message to Dean.

Expanding on that train of thought, Hermione lost herself in her memories once again as she sat on the cot and tucked one leg under the other and absently read her other messages.

Anthony had formulated the idea after meeting a hunter down in Hawaii who thought the trio was made up of three retired hunters and none of them bothered to correct her. She had made a passing comment about how hard it was to get their hands on correct lore and translations, Anthony had immediately jumped on the idea and convinced his two friends into helping him.

While Anthony was the main boss and creator of the site, he often and she did mean _often_, enlisted the help of both Hermione and Dean. Occasionally Dean would drag Katie Bell, who had become a magic lore expert after losing her right leg and the ability to fly on a broom stick, or Luca Caruso, an expert in magical and muggle diseases as well as a mythology enthusiast. Not that any of them particularly minded regardless.

It had been nearly two years since the formation of the website.

What had begun as a simple side project had branched into more dangerous obscure territory. It had been fun, it really had been; they provided people, no doubt hunters, with manipulated scans of wizarding books that fit the criteria they needed. The trio mainly provided names, weakness/traits/appearances, ways to kill, trap and/or banish.

Hermione had specialized in the occult, witchcraft, hoodoo, natural occurring magiks and theology. Dean fulfilled the requests for names, possible lairs, tracking methods and the like; occasionally when the three got hard requests he would ask their contacts for information. Anthony's job was to oversee rare or dead languages, translations, ancient tomes and obscure lore. Hermione and Anthony would usual split world mythology, but often it fell to Hermione to do the more tiresome jobs concerning the subject.

Hermione found the work rather tedious, but she was nonetheless happy that in some strange, detached sort of way. The research almost made her feel like she was back in Hogwarts helping out Harry and Ron with homework. While Hermione didn't miss the death and destruction that came with the war, she did miss the feel of being needed by her two now dead friends.

Finishing with her remaining messages quickly, Hermione put away the phone into her bag and silently summoned her pajama bottoms and shirt from one of the two front pockets of her pack.

Changing from her study pants and army green shirt, Hermione slipped on her owl patterned pajama pants after kicking off her leather boots and pulled on a camisole top. Her disposed clothing and shoes were whisked away into the opposing pocket with a flick of her wrist and Hermione silently packed away all her books and paperwork into their correct place within her bag, her desk followed shortly behind, leaving only her cot left in the room.

Hermione laid her body down on the soft cot and was out cold as soon as her head hit the pillow.


	3. Twenty Devils All Around You

**_This chapter is a lot shorter than the earlier two and, quite honestly, I was really iffy on beginning to merge the worlds so early on. Be warned this chapter takes part in the last few months of season three – Dean still hasn't went to hell – however, the boys meeting her doesn't change the timeline just yet._**

**_I have a headcannon that Hermione has OCD-like tendencies when faced with failure, since it is her biggest fear according to her boggart - which I firmly believe hasn't changed, she fears failing her friends and failing in her goals - so in order to combat this she tends to exert her control over all controllable expects of her life. This also explains her bossyness in the actual books, in my opinion, as a child it's implied that she bullied for being different and she saw this as a failure to fit in, causing her control issues that often flare up in the books. In this story, these tendencies and her anxiety flare up at times, but do not necessarily control her character. If that makes sense._**

**_It's building up; I swear. ;A;/_**

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This chapter takes place in Season 3, during Dean's last two months: I'm assuming, of course, that they had more cases than what was shown on the show. Hermione doesn't change anything _big_ until two or so chapters more, but I swear we're almost to the "bad-assness"!

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><p>Hermione Granger was an obsessed woman.<p>

Specifically, she was obsessed with two things in particular.

The first being her current project – a dusty hunk of rock that sat on the desk in front of her: the tablet, as Anthony has dubbed it after a particularly rough attempt at decoding its secret. It was the current bane of her existence.

She knew it was a tad bit melodramatic – all the time and tears and sweat and a tad bit of blood that she had poured into the project, that is – but to put it blunt she was becoming more and more fixated on the objective of translating it's obscure glyphs.

It hadn't fit into languages either Anthony, Dean or herself knew, so she had assumed that perhaps it was a sequence of symbols, letters or shapes that controls how the engravings were originally or enciphered, and she was absolutely certain it contained something _big_, something _important_.

Something interesting.

The only language it bared any resemblance to was Enochian. This assumption was sorely based on the fact that she found several runes that held a close similarity to the symbols for "Gal", "Mals", "Drux" as well as "Gisg" – while the comparision was a push, it was the closest connection Hermione could make.

Scratching her head, Hermione ruffled her already disheveled short curls that had been neatly combed and styled earlier that morning, but now, at only half past noon, greatly resembled the bird's nest it once was during her school years. She had assumed cutting it her chocolate tresses into a chic wavy pixie would have improve the wildness of her curls, but they just tended to stick up even more without proper care, now that it was missing the extra weight of her chopped locks.

She scowled at the thought of her messy mane and turned her full attention back to the insufferable tablet in front of her.

Two months.

Two months had gone into attempting to translate the chunk of stone; how she thought she could do it when the slab had left even Anthony a clueless wreck, she didn't know. As the months of helplessness and irritation of not being able to figure something out – she was the smartest witch of the age, for Merlin's sake, she should be able to do _this_ – welled up, Hermione felt a sharp pain in her chest and the accompanying rush of breathlessness.

_Breathe_, she inwardly hissed.

Taking deep breath through her nose, Hermione forced her body to relax as she exhaled loudly through her mouth.

_Again_.

Hermione repeated the action several more times, but still felt as though she was being buried alive as she continued to struggle to breathe.

Attempting to keep her hands and mind busy, Hermione gathered up her inkpots, quills, nibs, and parchment scattered across her desk.

She began methodically sorting the parchment into four piles; clean, unused parchment; her notes and various scribbles that could be put to use; papers she needed to read over and correct; and a hefty pile that she would _Incendio_ before she made herself dinner. Her quills and fountain pens were placed in their respective holders; whereas, her extra nibs were placed in a small decorative bowl Dean had gifted her on her twenty-fourth birthday. She arranged the inkpots in a straight edge on the edge of her desk by colour; black, red and green. The blue inkpot caused her pause – her heart rate accelerated in tandem – before she forced herself to take a deep breath and exhale loudly once again – she began rearranging the pots; this time red coming first, then green, blue, and finally black.

Several manila files sat haphazardly on her desk; she quickly separated them into three piles. The first was to be put back in her file cabinets; the pile closest to the edge of her desk were ideas to be tests and patented; the final and middle pile was her manuscripts she needed to look over, take her red pen to and rework in coherent words before sending them off to her agent. With a flick of her wrist, the first pile shot itself into her file cabinets where the cabinets were charmed to organize themselves periodically. She set the testing pile in the right corner of her desk and the last remaining pile to the far left, before shooting a wandless warming charm at her coffee cup of lukewarm coffee. She took a long drink of the mug that exclaimed in curvy script, "_You have nice manners for a thief and a liar_" before taking a close look at her work station.

The clunky tablet was slightly off-centre and as much as she tried to ignore it in favor of her now warm coffee, she could not; carefully, she aligned it exactly five and an half inches from the bottom edge of her desk and three and two thirds inches from the left of her desk, far enough off that she could continue her other work.

_There_, she thought, satisfied as her breathing patterns finally returned to a normal rhythm and the throbbing in her chest subsided. _A place for everything_, she mused happily, _and everything in its rightful place_.

She didn't agree with Anthony and Dean when they called her an obsessive compulsive with anxiety issues; she simply liked things being neat.

She liked things to be tidy.

She liked arranging things in a particular order.

Hermione hated clutter, she always had. Even her library was immaculately organized by category, relevance, size and then color. Sadly, due to the nature of her research, everything inevitably managed to mess itself up again, that also meant that Hermione took several minutes a day, several times a day, to organize her library and study to perfection.

She liked making lists; she liked planning, sometimes to the very finer points of said plan; she hated rushing into things half cocked – she had seen what such things could do to even the strongest people, it made her wary of following in their foolish footsteps. She liked doing things a particular way, in a particular sequence; not to say she couldn't step out of that comfort zone, per say, but doing so was slightly overwhelming.

The urges to organize and live in neatness, while they had always been a part of her life, the symptoms tended to flare up in times of great stress. All the same, the impulses hadn't been as bad when she had been moving around place to place, she never had time to settle down and form patterns, but the year she had spent in her home had made her into a creature of habit.

By doing things her way, she felt more in control of both herself and her surroundings. As Dean had once said, _there was a method to her madness_.

It made no difference that she would disturb her carefully organized word only minutes later when she decided to tackle the large tomb once again, she always felt better equipped to face the inevitably hopeless slab of insoluble symbols.

Order and method made sense to her – it was both her sword and shield. Logically she knew that it was a crippling weakness at times, but ultimately she greatly preferred the clear cut direction of orderliness rather than a chaotic mess of adventures.

Sitting down in her chair and pulling the pile of papers needing to be correct in front of her person, Hermione pulled over a pot of red ink and a feathered quill to Karl Limpley's manuscript. It was a favor; the younger Hufflepuff alumni had contacted her about a book in the works about the war. His first chapter, while holding some great nuggets of information, simply was not coherent and engaging enough for her to endorse such a manuscript without lots of editing and snipping. Taking her Falcon plumed utensil to the first page, she slashed viciously – perhaps more so than completely necessary – at the paragraphs, and wrote small notations in between the lines.

Rubbing away the forming crust from the corners of her eyes, Hermione realized something: She hadn't slept in over thirty-six hours. In fact Hermione had spent the last twelve hours glued to the mineral cipher.

At the thought of the chunk of rock, Hermione felt an uncomfortable wave of anxiety coupled with a huge dose of irritation wash over her. She had excelled in Arithmancy, Ancient Runes and Potions the most at Hogwarts; she was known for her sharp mind and even sharper analytical skills. She had never once encountered a code she could not decipher within a month.

Yet, this one just could not be translated.

Hermione could discern algorithms and patterns in even the most jumbled and chaotic data; she could recite all prime numbers from one until ninety-seven by the age of eight. It was her who solved the potions riddle and translated her first obscure tomb at the age of twelve.

This was supposed to be _simple_.

_But there's no discernible pattern in the message_, she thought in miserably.

She wondered morosely if she was losing her touch.

Her hands twitched at the thought, eager to arrange and organize something, anything, just to ease the crushing feeling in her gut. Looking around wildly, Hermione took in the sparklingly clean room; there was nothing to clean and put into order. She had fixed her library an hour ago; her kitchen and sitting room were always in pristine condition while her bedroom was much the same.

With nothing left to fix to her mind off the rock, Hermione was left with no other choice; the only way she would ever be able to relax and clear her, ironically, cluttered mind as to be able to work on either the pathetic excuse of a manuscript of the bothersome codex was to focus on her second obsession: Her Neighbor.

Like all obsessions, it was persistent and uncontrollable – regardless, of Hermione's constant denials and excuses – and gradually it took over her thought process whenever she wasn't focused on deciphering the tablet. Or when she allowed it to or when her mind began to wander, but that was neither here nor there.

Funnily enough, this obsession with his eccentric neighbor stemmed from her first.

He had seemingly popped up from nowhere the day Anthony delivered the tablet and more than once she had caught him at the same establishments as her. He was attractive, she'd give him that – _very_ attractive. However, Hermione knew all too well that beauty is quite literally only skin deep; contrary to popular belief a person's insides are not in any way, shape or form lovely and are quite revolting.

_Lucifer was once the most beautiful of angels_, Hermione thought grimily.

_Though_, she expanded on the thought, _as Toba Beta once said "Arrogance corrupts_." Pride is after all the 'root of all evils' and the true original sin – both Lucifer and Lilith, sinners before their time, fell victim to it.

_Sometimes, pride is all one can afford_.

Regardless, Hermione's neighbor had become a problem. While she had never caught more a glimpse of him: She could _feel_ him. It was different than when she felt magic or creatures, this feeling was strange and tingly. Sometimes she could swear she saw feathers littering his yard only to blink and find nothing.

Perhaps, she was finally losing her mind.

It was about time she had a mental meltdown, in her humble opinion at least.

_This_ obsession, opposed to the first, had begun two days shy of six weeks. She had chosen to take lunch at a local bar, named "The Chicken Bone." She had pulled her black 59 Cadillac Coupe Deville to the bar and caught the only clear view of him she had gotten the two weeks he had lived across from her. She had nearly crashed her car at the sight of his six golden wings.

To be fair she was on her fair share of halogens and medication at the time, so she may have been wrong, but she could swear she saw them.

She had flashed back to when she was seventeen – frightened and tired of fucking living. She had downed a bottle of single malt whiskey followed by another bottle of Xanax; she had been so _sure_ of her death at the time. Yet, it eluded her grasp in a flurry of russet feathers.

While the wings were not the same color, something sparked in her mind and she thought, vividly and clear: _I know him_.

Of course when she had stumbled from the car and taken a long look around, he was nowhere to be seen. It had been disappointing to say the least.

She had not seen him since.

Hearing a faint knock at the door, Hermione frowned – all her friends would floo over and none of her neighbors bothered to try communicating with her.

Regardless, she decided that she had spent too much time on the clunky piece of earthen rock, Hermione placed said rock into a locking drawer before securing the draw with both the combination lock and several of her strongest wards. She began to put away her ink pot and quill back in their respective places. Flicking her wand, her paperwork sorted and put itself away in its correct place, after which Hermione nodded her approval to no one or thing in particular.

Walking to the door, Hermione looked through the peep hole and caught sight of two men dressed in what appeared to be rather cheap suits. The witch opened the door and asked, "May I help you?"

"FBI, can we ask you a few questions?"

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><p><strong><em>Who can guess what she's attempting to translate and who is her angelic neighbor? <em>**

**_(EDIT: To people who guess that the neighbor is Gabriel, it's not. It is, however, a definitively an angel that is mentioned. I just don't think Gabriel _wouldn't_ approach her in someway if he was her neighbor. Good luck!)_**

**_Anyone who can guess both correctly wins a one-shot of any Hermione SPN pairing of their choice._**

**_Read and Review!_**


	4. A Man Mourning Tomorrow

**Disclaimer**: Obviously, I own nothing as sex and religion are _not_ prevalent in J. K. Rowling's books (such a shame, truly) and if I owned Supernatural… well let's just say Sam/Dean/Castiel triad would be an official pairing. The characters mentioned, aside from filler characters and the like, do not belong to me and belong to their respective writers and companies. Attempting to sue me for writing this will met with the shedding of many tears and, honestly, I am not a pretty crier.

**A/N**: This _feels_ like a short chapter, to me anyway, but I swear it's over 3k words. ;A;/ Regardless, we have one (most likely) or two more chapters of building before we get to the breaking of the first seal, but when we pass there, we'll be out of the building up stage and into the real stuff I have planned for this story.

**Story Notes**: Again, this chapter takes place during the last two or so months of Dean's demon deal; I'm assuming that the brothers worked jobs outside of the ones that had episodes. Hermione will not be saving Dean from going to hell!  
>I have a headcanon that strong witches and wizards can feel powermagic/angelic powers, like, it resonates in their very soul and their own magic subconsciously analyzes it as a threat or not. The can see the embodiment of demon deals as a veil of black smog over their head, as an anchor to hell – if you will – this anchor is what makes it so easy for Hell Hounds to find them.  
>I also work on the idea of extreme codependency in this story; codependency is not healthy, it's abusive in most cases, and this story will recognize this. However, Hermione, herself, had such a relationship with Harry in the last few months of the war, so Hermione will find herself envying this relationship, simply because it brings her back to the days when Harry was alive.<br>There isn't going to be a lot of angst connecting to the loss of her friends outside of this chapter, this is her finally facing it once again after several years by being faced with two men with a relationship that reminds her of what she lost. She will still have nightmares, but this story will most expand on the hopelessness she faced as she lost them rather than the actually death of them.  
>Also, sappy headcannon with the clock - I know - but the only way I can deal with a family of dead Weasleys is to have the clock list them as permanently "traveling"...<p>

**Someone guessed the angelic neighbor and tablet correctly! (I'll be writing their pairing story for them once they message me back. c: )**

(Just an FYI, but in this story Archangels aren't the only angels who have six wings.**  
><strong>_**There are SEVEN archangels in this story**__**: **__Michael_; _Lucifer_; _Raphael_; _Gabriel_; _Raguel_; _Zadkiel_; _Samael__._**  
><strong>Other Angelic beings will be the: **Principalities** with two wings; **Powers** with four; **Virtues** with six; **Dominions** with two; **Ophanim** with six; **Seraphim** with six _single_ hued wings; **Archangels** with six _multi-hues/gradient_ colored wings; **Angelic Henchmen**, who are a level lower than Powers, with two mediocre sized wings; **Cupids** with two small wings; **The Intelligence Department** with two; **Reapers** with none; **Rit Zien** with four.  
>If you want more information on my angel headcanons or explanations, you'll have to message me and I'll explain to you're the theory and explanation behind them.)<p>

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><p>. ... .. . Chapter 3 – A Man Mourning Tomorrow . .. ... .<p>

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><p>They were clearly not FBI.<p>

Hermione realized this by the time they made it to her sitting room.

The taller of the two was attractive, no one would, could, ever deny him that, but there was a _lust_ in his eyes, envy in those hazel irises and something positively feral and _frightening_ beneath the surface. She didn't like it.

She could _feel_ it – the power he held – crawling beneath her skin, swarming through her bloodstream like cockroaches. The demonic like taint while not intoxicating was very potent – it visibly manifested as a black, ivy-like-plant, which was encroaching up his legs and across his hands - where ever, whomever, it was given to him from, was very powerful. She didn't like that either, if she was being honest.

It made her nervous.

The bulkier and shortest of the duo was completely different. He wasn't frightening, per say, but she hadn't survived a war for nothing… She knew the look in his eyes. It was acceptance – acceptance of death and lose and everything horrible in the world. This man had come to terms with the fact that he would never be happy.

She allowed her eyes to drift to the floor; it hit too close to home and brought up images of green eyes and round rimmed glasses, images she had _fought_ to bury. She_**really**_ didn't like that.

He _stunk_, not of body odor, but of leaking life force – an overwhelming stench of, quite frankly, _unappealing_ power. The rugged man was clearly anchored to something or someone; whatever it was had dug their claws deep into his very soul… The thought stirred an uncomfortable feeling in the depths of her stomach. Floating over his head was a dark smog substance, which she knew, from experience, was meant as a tether to hell or sometimes to a powerful, dark being. She wasn't the only one who could see such things, wizards and witches who were strong enough to easily see such things; Hermione had begun being able to see these connections by the age of seventeen. She was then able to see when people had taken the mark by the red gash that streaked their shadow; sadly it also made her too complacent in her abilities. (She hadn't seen the streak in Hannah's and had foolishly forgotten that a spy doesn't need to have the _mark_ to be a spy.)

There were dozens of things the smog _could_ be, but the most prominent being a sexual connection to an alpha as alpha monsters were possessive of their lovers, often marking them with an anchor of sorts. It _could_ be a Tengu marking their prey or the more likely option: a demon deal.

It wasn't only the thought that put her on edge. When the two entered her home, their eyes met for a split second and she was forced to watch as the lust and acceptance melted away completely. She was left with only an unconditional adoration and _love_.

She hated that.

She _wanted_ that.

Hermione had seen that look before, she was fifteen and had slung her arms around _her_ boys' shoulders and pulled them closer as they crossed the snowy path to Hogsmead. Harry and Ron had met each other's eyes with mirth as they gazed upon her – she was sure her expression to them was much the same – with a look much like theirs.

The thought made her angry, but she pushed back any visible indicators of her rage.

"Excuse me, but what did you say your names were?"

The two shared a look; Hermione observed them with a finally trained eye.

They were like vanilla and chocolate, Hermione realized; though who was what was up for debate. The dark, sensual and bitter-sweetness of chocolate filled her senses, but the bright smoothness of vanilla was not far behind. It was muddled as they spilled and mix with each another; all she could tell was that they were _together_; co-existing on the same plane of existing, somewhere far away from anyone else. They were here, but they weren't _here_; they gravitate to each other like an apple to the ground without realizing – caught in a gilded cage of border-line-obsession and adoration.

Hermione realized, to them, breathing alone was to hardly breathe at all; to be along was hardly living at all. When their bodies were apart, the witch could almost _hear_ their air between them _screaming_ for release.

Their bodies were, so clearly, intertwined in an everlasting chaos, revolving delicately around each other like celestial bodies. They are reliant on their bond, unable to compare the other to anyone around them; but love is overwhelming and dependence is exhausting. So, they are destined to destroy and betray, no matter how arrogant and unyielding they appear.

Hermione knows this to be true.

Codependency at its most delightfully _icky_; they are the _divine_ disaster.

The taller of the two smiled pleasantly – Hermione noted the forced edge to it – and answered, "I'm agent Jimmy Page and this is my partner Robert Plant."

Pausing for a moment, Hermione watched _Robert_'s face intently. His strong jaw and chin indicated a physical strength and aggressive approach to things in favor to a passive one; his brow lay lower rather than higher, so, according to what she knew about analyzing faces, he was impulsive. In comparison his partner's features portrayed Jimmy as the softer, more open of the two, but the look in his eyes was screaming a different message all together.

Robert was clearly the safer of the two and seemed to be the least likely to torture her within an inch of her life. Robert seemed more the time to prefer mercy killing, unlike Jimmy.

She recognized the names, though.

A snort left her before she could stop it, much to the confusion of the two men. She laughed, it bordered on disbelief and hysteria.

_They were hunters_.

Covering her mistake, Hermione quipped light, her lips twisted into an imitation of a pleasant smile, "No relation to Led Zeppelin's band members I assume?"

The split minute of terror that flashed in their eyes made it worth it; her smile grew ever so slightly.

They were defiantly not FBI.

"No," not-Jimmy said cautiously, "we get that a lot, but sadly we are _not_ related to them – at least not directly."

Hermione paused, but did not bother believing his obvious lie, "Regardless, what would two _government agents_ want with little ol' me."

"Well…" The taller began.

. ... .. .

The visit from the hunters – excuse, _FBI _– was not a pleasant one.

Apparently they were in two investigating the disappearances and inevitable deaths of a young girl by the name of Chloe Lauren and her bother Lucas Lauren. Hermione could vividly recall the woman's mother – a real cow of a woman, in her opinion, treated her daughter and son like the scum of her shoe – getting especially weepy for a news station when approached by the network about her missing daughter and son. The witch had never liked Ester Lauren, but had liked her children and made it a point to make sure they were picked up from school and properly fed whenever her mother would conveniently "forget".

Chloe and Lucas reminded her of Ginny – all wild hair and an even more wild temper – while the boy, Lucas, reminded her of timid Neville with the looks of a young Percy Weasley.

It had hurt to spend time with the children, but had ultimately taken a genuine to the siblings. They had went missing two weeks after she left for a dig in Peru at the urging of her old mentor and three days before she had finally gotten a hold of the tablet from Anthony. When returned a week after their disappearance, she had put aside the tablet and attempted to find, only to come up with nothing. She had put out her feelers in an attempt to find them.

Hermione took the news of their deaths surprisingly well – if one could call producing two bottles from the end table, one of Balvenie and another filled with water rather than single malt scotch, and a silver zippo from her pocket after sending the two men away, taking it well. She poured a generous amount of single malt into her tumbler and added a small amount of water into the liquor before taking the glass under the flame of her engraved lighter. Taking a long drink of the smooth liquor, Hermione tasted the honeyed orange marmalade, toasty vanilla and oaky notes of the alcohol with a grimace.

She still hated whisky.

Hermione sat back and decided one in the afternoon was as good of a time to get drunk as any. Downing her tumbler of liquor, she poured herself another in much the same with as the first, but with less water and more whiskey.

She felt empty.

Everyone who _knew _Hermione Granger, knew her heart was made from dry parchment and acid based ink.

Victor Krum – Reigning King of Quidditch – had attempted, tried with all his might, to change it into silk spun from the purest of gold, but his hands where too clumsy and his lips too sweet to ever make the desired tapestry from her heartstrings. He was sweet, truly, cloyingly so – never packing that acidic twang and the crunchy texture she needed to balance out the _sweetness_. Behind the sweetness was a hard rubber quality, too hard and tough to rip through with her teeth. She always did and always would associate Gothic cathedrals and monasteries with Viktor - so ugly that he's gorgeous, and that kind of beauty tastes different, but different does not equal better.

Ronald Weasley had tried to compliment her desiccated organs with his acid, biterbitterbitter taste. He had pulled her to him during an argument in the common room during their fifth year and shoved his tongue down her throat; she had bit viciously at his lips as his hands went upwards to cup her breasts. He had released her as his pale face flushed red, but Hermione had paused. Her disappointment at feeling nothing, _again_, had changed quickly to anger as she brought her hand against his face and stomped to her room.

He hadn't attempted to kiss her again, for which, she was grateful.

Cormac hadn't seen it when he asked her to have dinner with her after an Order meeting – that Hermione Jean Granger could never feel anything for anyone to the point they _needed_. She had foolishly said yes in an attempt to see if it was just Victor and Ron that had failed to awaken the _passion_ she had always heard and read about. Cormac had failed much the same as the previous two. He was softer than Ron without the sweetness of Victor, with a finesse of a true ladies man – he was bittersweet, coffee and peaches. She hadn't liked it; the texture had been reminiscent of the tater-tot crumble. Absolutely revolting.

Cormac wasn't the last; there was a man, who was a long scream from gentleman, in west London two and an half years into the war. He had tasted like hard liquor and despair; she had let him take her to his hotel room and felt him tear through her innocence while she bit his shoulder. Hermione had left before dawn. She never bothered to learn his name or search for him again; he was nothing worth having.

It had only spiraled lower and lower since then for three more years; Hermione had buried herself in men and women, trying to find something that could give her something to believe in again.

She would constantly hound Dean for being insensitive, but it was only because she had already learned how to hide her own insensitivity. How could she ever express to him, to Anthony, that her heart was essentially _gone_. It had shriveled up until nothing was left, but an old book – undesirable and delicate.

She stood – stumbled, really – into her room and onto her bed.

Hermione stares at the ceiling and though, vividly and wholly, about how much she missed Harry Potter.

_The voice is a rush of wind-swept leaves, apathetic and mildly interested, but ultimately somewhere _else_. The ruined man says, in a hoarse voice, "I'm tired of life."_

_Hermione glances into his half-focused, indifferent green-green-green eyes. She doesn't answer. She pours him another glass of spiced rum instead. She knows she should pour him tea or coffee, anything besides alcohol – he needs caffeine; Hermione can tell. The bruises around his eyes can't be fully hidden with glamour charms; the circles resemble those of a crack addict. He hasn't been sleep, but Hermione knows this. She hasn't been sleeping, either; if he had ever managed to doze off, Hermione would have heard his harsh screaming from across their shared room._

_Neither has slept to avoid the nightmares; they work themselves until the exhaustion becomes a fevered frenzy and then an insane lightness, the kind that screams I-can't-think-until-I-pass-out-where-I-stand. They work themselves into this heightened stage in hopes that they will go straight into REM sleep and skip the dreams altogether._

_Both Harry and she practice the same method of nightmare prevention._

_The lack a potent enough version of Dreamless-Sleep makes her wish Snape hadn't died in that apothecary with Remus. Hermione could use the help of someone who isn't half insane with the lightness-can't-correctly-think two out of five days. Stupid mistakes slow the research for a solution down._

_The insanity dulls her brain, stretches it like pink taffy; she can't say it, but she's tired of life too._

_He stares at her impassively as she refills her own glass and crosses her ankles as she swallows down the too strong-liquor of her undiluted drink_

_He waits for Hermione to answer._

_Harry understands how the unendingly time loop dulls and eats at the pinkish putty of her mind as it reshapes itself to prevent snapping._

_Hermione meets his gaze again and realizes, she's too weary to hate anymore – too fucking weary to hate the aristocratic scum that fucked up their lives, the corrupt government that allowed _this_ to happen, the Higher Beings that created that damned prophecy, too drop-dead tired to hate the men who killed her friends, too drained to hate herself for murdering people herself. _

_She's been too weary for a long time._

_Even the silence is tiring; waiting until they both finally die is hard, but waiting until George finally kicks it is even harder. The Weasley clock ticks as she downs her glass. All but one of the hands on the clock has fallen permanently to "TRAVELING" and stayed there since._

_So when the Boy-Who-Lived says, again, "I'm tired of life."_

_His best friend replies, "We're all tired of something."_

She can barely feel the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes as begins to weep for the first time since she left Britain.

She misses them.

As she sobs, loudly and wet, she wants – she wants many things.

She is Hermione Granger. She wants: friendship and power and to never become someone's prey again and the sight of emerald eyes as they meet hers across the room. She wants: skill and recognition and a family of nine red heads and the feeling of Neville's hugs, he always gave the _best_ hugs. She wants: confirmation of her worth and the strength to continue on and the sight of silver blond and sandy brown hair. She wants: a pair of still-alive twins and a group of students who fought for what was right and –

For them to come back.

Because - because, she misses _them_; she misses Harry and Ron and Ginny, Fred, George, Molly and Luna and Neville, Padma, Parvati and even Draco – she's so fucking tired of being alone. She wants to be loved, by someone, anyone. She wants to be those two brothers – she thinks their brothers, they look like brothers; are they brothers? She wants to have that _need_ for each other, to be all the other sees and all they both need, completely and wholly and unashamed.

Hermione misses the feeling of being needed.

Crying until her eyes feel raw and her throat coats over, Hermione wills her eyes closed and falls into a nightmare filled sleep.

. ... .. .

**More A/N**: I like writing **_rare_** pairings, especially in crossovers, so if you have a x-over pairing you'd like to read, hit me up with the suggestion and there's a 98% chance I'll do it.


	5. Mortal Flesh - Immortal Bone

I have a headcanon for this story: **It doesn't take a prophet to read an Angelic tablet, but it does take a prophet to read God's Word.**  
>What I mean is; a character – in this case Hermione, Anthony, Dean and Leanne – can read a false or self fulfilling prophecy, per say, if they have enough magical power.<br>Remember Dean, Anthony and Hermione are both extremely magically powerful beings, Leanne is able to read the tablet not because she's powerful herself, but she's holding the child of an extremely powerful wizard, so not does she hold her own magic, but the blooming power of her child. This is also why Tynnia cannot read the tablet. Dean, Anthony and Hermione are not the only natural born witches and wizards who would be able to read the tablets in their own kind of way.  
>In these cases, when a witch of wizard is powerful enough to see this in the tablets, they use languages considered "holy" or the closets to them, that the character knows, reads or can speak. I hope that makes sense.<br>I cannot reiterate this enough: **What Hermione, Dean and Anthony see is not the true content of the tablet, rather God created a failsafe, if you will, the reader will be told what they need in some cases; however, it is not uncommon for what they read to be false or self-fulfilling prophecies.**  
>I hope that made sense, because I felt like it was a cool idea and felt cool when I was writing it… but I'm not sure if it's because I came up with that it sounds cool to me or if it really is. uvu;;<p>

**Angel's True Voice Headcanon**:  
>All angels have an instrument and genre of music they belong to, these correspond to their personalitystrengths/speech patterns/etc. can be related to a Patronus embodying a witch's/wizard's personality type.  
>Ex. Gabriel is Latin American and plays the acoustic guitar; Michael and Lucifer are both classical and play the harp and violin respectively; Raphael plays the organ and plays dark Opera style music; Castiel plays the Greek lute; Uriel is the oboe.<br>An angel's true voice, when properly understood and heard, is their instrument while their music genre is their personality type.  
>I explain this now, because it may or may not be explain for several more chapters when she meets Castiel and stuff, so I didn't think you'd like to be left out of the loop.<p>

This chapter is a time skip, take this as several months after the brothers came to town. Like I said, Hermione will not be truly interacting with them for some time, but I'll explain why I put in their appearance so early later on.

Also, I'm looking for a BETA, since my friend Helena, can longer help me out. If you're interested... PM me!

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><p>. ... .. . Chapter 4 – Mortal Flesh; Immortal Bone . .. ... .<p>

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><p><em>She's sixteen, when they talk about Voldemort openly for the first time.<em>

_Harry's eyes are closed when she finds his prone form lying on the outskirts of the Burrow's pond, but they flutter open as Hermione steps towards him, only to slide closed again with the confirmation of her presence. Ron is not far behind her, a basket of biscuits, scones and, her favorite, cherries clutched in his hand as he rambles to where Hermione and Harry now sit in silence._

"_Voldemort," Harry says when finally sits down beside them, "has to die."_

_His voice is soft, melodic when he says it – horrifying in its juxtaposition to the harsh sentiment that just passed his lips. It gives Hermione a pause as she takes in the deceptive serenity on his face._

_Ron freezes, but pretends to have heard nothing as he pulls a blueberry scone from the cotton lined basket and begins to munch on it._

_Hermione on the other hand, finds herself wishing she had something to say in reply, but there is no more that needs to be said: _Voldemort has to die.

_Instead, she settles for asking the next best thing._

"_What are you going to do when the war ends?"_

_Harry visibly tenses at the question, this time Hermione pretends not to notice._

"_I'm 'onna be an auror," Ron proclaimed through his mouthful of bread, the flecks cover her chin and shirt as he accidentally sprays Harry and her in crumbs. "An 'ero I'll be, best damn hero the ministry ever did see."_

_Rolling her eyes, Hermione magik'ed away the crumbs with a flick of her wrist before plucking up a blade of grass from the lawn they were sitting on and proceeded to dunk her bare feet into the water of the pond. Pulling pieces idly from the plant, Hermione turned her head towards her other friend and asked, "What about you Harry?"_

"_I don't know, Mia," his jaw clenches for a moment before continuing, "I never really thought too much about it, but…" he trailed off._

_Hermione didn't miss a beat, "But what?"_

"_I don't want to get my hopes up." At Ron's questioning look, Harry elaborated, "I mean, I don't know if I'll live, I don't want to plan anything I may not get to live."_

_A sobering moment passed between the trio; the nearby rocks seemed to become increasingly interesting. Hermione forced herself to focus her eyes on the brooding boy in front of her, since the death of Sirius he had become increasingly tormented. The young witch wished she could do something, help him in some way._

"_Well," Hermione hedged, "I want to make a difference, by helping people, I suppose. The ones society forgets or purposely excludes- werewolves, house elves, vampires and the like, they deserve a voice."_

_Ron let out a melodramatic sigh, "House-elves are happy working for wizards, Mione."_

"_I can't hear you over the asinine amount of ignorant drivel falling from your lips," Hermione looked down her nose at him. "Regardless, of what wizards say, magical creatures, all of them, deserve the basic rights that all human beings have at the very_ least."

_Ron opened his mouth to reply before deciding his hunger more important than beginning a fight with Hermione, instead he shoved a biscuit into his mouth and grounded it into fine powder judging by the clinching movement of his jaw._

_Hermione huffed at her red haired friend before reaching over to grab a handful of cherries from the basket._

_Hermione, personally, liked to eat her cherries slowly._

_She prefers to hold them between her fingers as she sinks her teeth into purplish red skin to expose the juicy, dark center of the seed to the nippy August air. When she was younger and her father wasn't watching, she would swallow the seeds. She'd feel the bumpy, hardness slipping down her throat and into the pit of her stomach; it fueled the foolish hope that someday, it would grow into a cherry tree._

_But now she is nearly grown up, sixteen and not needing the comforts of wishful thinking. Or, at least, that is what she would like people to believe. She understands that could, would, never grow from the abyss of her stomach; the acidity destroys the seed and tries to take whatever nutrients are held within, unluckily for her body, all there is to be held is their tiny deposit of toxin. So now that she is older and wiser, she spits the seeds out onto the grass, in hopes that one day, they will find themselves under the soil and grow into a cherry tree._

_Spitting out the seed to her behind her to her left, Hermione tossed the stem in the opposite direct as she watches Harry's face slowly turn pensive. _

"_I'd like to play professional Quidditch, actually," he finally answers._

_Nodding in approval, Hermione brought another cherry to her mouth and looked towards the lake. She watched the reflection of the clouds over head as they slowly moved across the sky._

_One way or another, _Hermione thinks_, she'll make sure Harry achieves his dream._

. ... .. .

Waking with a start, Hermione turned in bed grabbing blindly for her muggle alarm clock in order to turn off the blasted alarm.

The small black rectangle shaped machine boasted "8:00 A.M." in bright red letters, the sheer, glaring brightness of the offending numbers aggravated her sensitive retinas- like lewdly dripped acid, hissing, she blinked until her eyesight adapted to the lone source of light in the room. After doing so, Hermione tossed her legs over the edge of her bed and cursed every deity she could think of as her legs nearly buckled under her as she attempted to walk.

Steadying herself using the nightstand, Hermione pulled on her long robe over her light chemise.

Something was wrong.

She could feel it.

She ran through her messy, short locks as she stumbled out of her dark room into the scarcely lit hall way. Too tired to function without coffee and too awake to go back to bed; it was times like these that Hermione cursed her desire to wake up with the sun every morning.

It was over rated in mornings like these.

Regardless, she needed to figure out the secret of the tablet now that she had a better idea of what it was written in. It had begun a few months after those hunters came around. As it turned out Chloe and Lucas had been killed by an Aswang; she knows this because she was the one who provided the information.

Large bird like woman with a long proboscis through which they suck out organs out of humans; she doesn't need to feed regularly, so initially it suck out organs that are unnecessary for a human's survival, keeping them alive for a long time. It was gruesome research, but someone has to do so.

Regardless, the tablet's fuzziness and illegibility had seemingly begun to dissipate as she had been able to dissertate as Hermione was suddenly able to discern the tablet to be a mixture of Enochian, Hebrew and Classical Armenian.

It seemed that this sudden sight hadn't just rubbed off on Hermione alone; no, when she had taken the tablet to Anthony, the wizard had been speechless to find that he could now make out Enochian and a branch of Church Slavonic. Hermione had been scandalized that he seemed to not be able to make out the Hebrew or Armenian, so they had demanded that Dean look it over as well. Two days after handing off the tablet to Dean, the muggleborn wizard had floo'd to the Goldstein residence proclaiming that both Anthony and Hermione had lost their minds, because the tablet was written in Malay, Arabic, Kannada and Koine Greek.

It had resulted in lots of huffs of aggravation and, admittedly, several hexes being thrown in various directions. The disagreement had carried on for nearly two hours until Leanne stopped in the room, four months pregnant, and, in no uncertain terms, told them exactly how she would torture them if they didn't stop arguing so she could sleep.

Hermione had learned in that moment: Leanne Goldstein née Pyrites was much more creative than the average Death Eater.

When they had finally convinced Leanne to try her hand at the tablet, she had frowned and snapped that all she could see was German and French on the damn tablet before stomping over proclaiming that her husband should have married his best friends since he clearly prefers their company over his _pregnant_ wife. Needless to say, Dean and Hermione had high tailed it out of their house and back to Dean's home for the opinion of his girlfriend, Tynnia.

Tynnia, however, had looked at the tablet without success; she was unable to make out a single thing on the stone, much to her ire.

Hermione had gone home a few hours later, with a hunk of rock and dozens of unanswered questions.

Staggering into her the modest kitchen of her modest home, she flicked her wrist in the general area of the coffeepot; a silver spoon began loading up the filter of the machine before flipping itself on. She sat on her kitchen island and, not for the first time, appreciated her kitchen. Hermione adored the simplistic, modern feeling of the room – white cabinets, tiled backsplash, a wall of windows, buffed countertops, white appliances and soft lighting; she loved it. Her kitchen island had a small framed photograph rather than fruit or flowers for a center piece.

The photograph had been taken during meeting in Hog's head by an enthusiastic Collin, it played a loop of Hermione pulling her boys – yes, _her_ boys, they were hers in all ways that mattered – into a large hug, Ron's arms floundered and his butter beer bounced as it spilled from the edges of its glass as he stumbled to match Hermione's short statue. In comparison to Ron's awkward fumbling, Harry's previously flat expression split into a shit eating grin as his arm snaked behind Hermione's back and pulled his two friends into a tighter hug. In the background Ginny and the twins had tossed their heads back in laughter at the face a young second year had pulled at the display of affection shown by the trio. To the far left Luna and Neville looked completely content in losing themselves in each others' eyes while Dean had pulled his girl friend of the time, Padma Parvati, into his arms and spun and dipped her lowly, planting a chaste kiss to her smiling lips. The rest of the members had scattered themselves in the surrounding tables each enraptured in their own personal conversations or thoughts.

Occasionally, when she wondered why she continued on with her charade of a life, she'd look at the photograph and remember: _They're why_.

It wasn't the only pictures she kept around the house; Hermione wasn't a particular art collector and tended to keep most of her photographs out of sight and out of mind.

However, she did have a picture of Harry, Ron and she curled around each other on the Gryffindor across the hallway from the picture of Anthony and Dean standing – or in Anthony's case, sitting – in the middle of the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland; the photo played a loop of Anthony sneering at her as she took a picture, several bottles held firmly in his lap while Dean threw his head back in laughter, she couldn't quite remember what about any longer, three leather bound journals held in his arms.

Hung over the fireplace mantle was a portrait of the Order surrounding Grimmauld Place's dining room table. Dean had painted in muggle paint, so unlike several other paints she owned, this one did not move. In the painting all the members were looking forward soberly. It was a gorgeous painting, but it hit too close to home, causing her to unconsciously avoid her sitting room and in turn the painting inside.

Other pictures were of Harry, Ron, the occasional Weasley, Anthony and/or Dean; majority of her pictures of other Order members were locked away in her attic or her Gringotts vault.

Noticing that the constant gurgle of the coffee marker had dissipated, Hermione stood to prepare her coffee. Taking the carton from the refrigerator, she poured just a dab of milk into the black coffee before walking the carton back to the icebox. She dropped two tea spoons of sugar into her now creamy looking coffee and stirring the spoon in the cup idly.

Rubbing her temples, Hermione walked back to her perch on the kitchen island's surrounding chairs.

It had been getting worse.

The headaches and memories; not a night went by that she wasn't plagued with memories of what used to be. She'd almost prefer the nightmares to the constant reminders.

Groaning, Hermione nearly down her mug in one gulp. Narrowly avoiding potentially choking – how horrible would that be; surviving a war only to die choking on her coffee – Hermione hacked into her clench fist before popping the same fist against her chest reflexively.

Every morning.

Every bloody morning, she does the same thing – choke on her coffee.

Every morning.

_Merlin_, what is wrong with her?

Frowning, Hermione finished her first cup of coffee, slowly this time before fixing herself another the same way as she had before.

After fixing her mug of coffee, Hermione took the mug to her office; she had work to do.

. ... .. .

Emerging from her office nearly six hours later, Hermione looked a wreck; hair sticking up wildly; her robe had been pushed off her shoulders, but had been left tied around her waist causing it to look like a horribly made skirt than the silk robe it was. Her face was abnormally pale as she seemed to forcibly drag herself from her office.

Today was not a good day.

She had been able to translate the shattered pieces of the tablet; none of which settled well with her.

_-envied such a man, dust-borne and unspoiled; brother of Eden itself, twinned in the green loam of the mossy growth of the ground; all opened to his will even her – the daughter of marrow, how tragic, it must be, the self-secluding and sheltering lies. For she resents him; resents her birthright, resents a world of darkness and interiors; to whom must she bow? Why can she not soar through the skys like dust's daughter; why could that not be she?_

The text became muddled for several paragraphs before she was finally able to make out the words once again.

_-and so she fell, tripped upon weak ankles, into the light and became trapped in the nebulae held in his moondust hand; his tongue left scorch marks upon the underside of her mind and no longer can she pretend to be blind. Forever a guilty woman she reached upwards and gobbled up the dying stars that he wrote across the fruit; she can feel the supernovas burning deep in her toes and low in her stomach as he etched the words in the pillars of her soul for the angels to see; it left her lungs heaving for something , anything; she is estranged from even the air, but of course – she is marrow and bone in a world of dust and dirt, ribs are never meant to feel the light of day, feel the touch of wind. She wants to rid herself of this membranous cage of flesh and blood; she will shed this skin, as the snake has shown her – the aroma of sage, browning apples and sin will leave its brand upon her tongue, breasts and thighs, but she will fall into the darkness knowing: nakedness is a gift all the same._

The translated script had left her feeling _strange_; Hermione was not a fool, anyone who could see it was about Eve, but how could she look past this.

Sighing, Hermione decided to go straight to bed instead of thinking upon it more than needed. Slowly, but surely, she walked back to her bedroom, discarded the robe on to her dresser and removed her socks – Hermione had never liked running around on bare floors with equally bare feet – before lowing herself into a sitting position on the bed. She didn't enjoy these _feelings_ that the tablet dragged up, the feelings with religious undertones; she had casts them all away when she burned the bible, her bible, all those years ago. She had forsaken her faith long ago and regardless of her belief or lack thereof, reading her translation of the tablet had messed with her mind.

Groaning, she hauled her legs over the side of her bed and onto the soft mattress before laying her head against the equally soft pillow. She tucked herself under her blankets before turning off the lights with a flourish of her wrist.

As she drifted off the sleep she head a thin screeching sound in the back of her mind; the sound was painful when concentrated upon, but slowly the sound became overthrown by what sounded like the picking of a Greek Lute. Between the notes she could make out the words, barely, softly – so much so she passed it off as a trick of her mind.

_Dean Winchester is saved_.

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><p>. .. ... .. .<p>

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><p>So, I promise the action will begin either this chapter or the next!"<br>I feel that this chapter was a bit rushed, but it can't be helped, since no matter what I do it still feels rushed all the same. *sigh* Regardless, I did have fun writing about Eve, originally I was going to do Lilith, but I already know what direction I'm going with her and when I'm introducing her, so putting her in the tablet would do absolutely nothing, but be more confusing.  
>Also, to those who are wondering, this story isn't going to be the <em>canon<em> SPN apocalypse; what I want to do is focus on bloodlines, true to god lore, things that the brothers missed in their "shoot first" attitude and the like. Hermione will be bad-ass, trust me, but she's still Hermione: she researches and this Hermione is a curious blighter, I swear I didn't plan on having her so bloody curious, but it just happened. So I'm rolling with it.

I have a lot of mind-fucks planned for this fic, so I look forward to showing them to you.

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><p><strong>POLL<strong>:

What rare pairing should I write my next story about?  
>Should the story be a one-shot or a multi-chapter fic?<p>

**Options**:  
>HermioneHannibal Lecter (NBC's Hannibal)  
>HermioneClint Barton (Avengers)  
>HermioneDemetri (Twilight)  
>HermioneUriel (Supernatural)  
>HermioneGadreel (Supernatural)  
>HermioneRegulus (Harry Potter)

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><p>Review! It helps me update faster.<p>

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><p><em>Also, you guys should follow my Tumblr as I occasionally post headcannons there I'll be using before I post a chapter or I post expertstidbits._


	6. Lips Around a Whimper

**There will be NO updates this week after this one**.  
>I'm revising for my Science and Social Studies portion of my GED test.<br>For those of you who don't know, I've been homeschooled for several years and have two more years before I'm eighteen, but my mother and I decided it'd be much easier for me to simply get my GED out of the way. I've already passed my Mathematics, actually; after I pass my GED I'm going to be go after my NCTC, ACT and SAT, so I'm going to busy for a long while.  
>But I digress; I've been taking a GED prep class two days a week, which we're upping to three days a week now, so I'll be even more busy than usual.<br>I apologize for any inconvenience, but yeah – I hope you enjoy this chapter, regardless.  
>. ... .. .<p>

Okay, I meant for the action to begin this chapter, but I wanted to introduce Jehoel first, who will be like the Castiel to her Dean – relatively speaking, of course. Jehoel has been noted as being related to human emotions, so I feel that he may be more open to helping humans than most of his brothers.

For those who don't know or are too lazy to look it up – Jehoel was an associate of the archangel Michael; he was in charge of throwing the Leviathans into purgatory to begin with. Jehoel is the Angel of Presence; regarded as a mediator for skirmishes and battles; Jehoel is also the chief angel of the Seraphim.

Plus, he's totally one of my favorite angels in traditional lore – given that he isn't often mentioning in _anything_. He just appeals to me as a whole.

Who's your favorite angel, guys?  
>From either religious lore or Supernatural – it doesn't matter to me.<br>. ... .. .

I would have done so much with this story if I wasn't limited to the guidelines of canon; I would have explored the allusions of inhumanity and esotericism when it came to the angels. I would have recreated them with bird-like noses, throats open to the world and an animalistic glint in their twenty eyes; white markings littering the expanse of exposed skin on the legs, arms and torso. Angels that were beyond bestial, because they are simply beyond this Earth; they would of had minds beyond our conceptual mental capacity; they would be exploding atoms of light and grace held within vessels of flesh and bone; they would obey no _man_'s law.  
>Hermione, in turn, would have become a prophet with a body like clockwork; the teachings of God carved into her very soul – the fault lines of human frailty littering her half-mortal-half-not flesh in a series of pale knots of torn tissue. She would have barred the figurative scars like the welcomed kisses of a lover.<br>She would know that every breath of human air was a hazard that would only cause her more and more pain, yet, she would find herself drowning in it; she would feel the darkness rising within her, lighting her skin on fire as it withered beneath the tissue cage of human skin, fighting to release itself from its fleshy prison.  
>She wouldn't have been peaceful; she would have been mad and violent, <em>god-touched<em>. She wouldn't have been a mere vessel for the divine; she would have been filled to the brim with free will and she would exert that will upon the Earth through any means necessary.  
>She would have been a prophet, damned for her visions to the point of accepting herself as an evil woman; she would embody the grace in the descent into the darkness, the acceptance of evil, taking the world onto herself. She would have been a prophet who destroyed herself; her honor; she would have thrown herself into the pits of damnation to fulfill some latent meaning.<br>She would have eaten the sins of the Earth in order to erase them, to save lives, to bring the Earth to a point of complete balance of justice - good and evil. She would have shattered herself entirely in the process; descended so far into the rabbit-hole that she became her own traitor; that she became Judas Iscariot of her own life. She would have become a messiah who does not _die_ for the sins of others, but is destroyed by them nonetheless, because by the absorption and absolution of them, she literally has become the sins of the world.  
>The story of divinity is a series of falls; the fall of man; the fall of Eve; the fall of Lucifer; it is always a story of falling from a Utopian past into a damning future; Hermione would have become one of the most world changing falls ever know.<br>Regardless, Canon has prevented me from doing what I wanted with "Laying with Lions" so I'm going with plan b, that while not nearly as spiritual, examines the mental state of a woman forced back into a fate she had forsaken. A broken, empty shell of oneself that is only more and more broken as the days pass and finally when everything is said and done, they are left with only darkness and a new beginning.  
>I am really disappointed that I couldn't do my original idea, but it would have shattered SPN canon all together and I fear that I would have gotten too far from the ideas of SPN for it to continue to be SPN.<br>. ... .. .

Hermione is a badass, even in canon, she truly is; in this story she _won't_ be super over powered, but she'll be able to manipulate things to better herself. She'll be skilled and she'll be super intelligent, but she will not be over powered. In this scene I wanted to illustrate that, magic isn't an unlimited power source, if you don't replenish it, it slows and dulls – it's like the mind when deprived of sleep.

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><p>. ... .. . Chapter 5 – Lips Around a Whimper . .. ... .<p>

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><p>The bar was most empty, it was rather ugly, if she was being honest – the kind of dive with cheap posters of bikini clad girls riding beer cans and lots of tacky holiday decorations from every holiday left over from years and years of improper, drunken celebration. The walls were peeling and covered with strange yellow and green grime spots; the lighting was low in a worthless attempt to hide exactly how filthy the joint really was.<p>

Not that Hermione cared all that much, really, as she sat comfortably on the worn upholstery of the barstool at the equally worn bar; a completely empty notebook lay in hand and a chewed pen that fit the contours of her hand too comfortably in the other.

She hadn't written anything.

Grumbling, Hermione put both down on the bar as she brought her mostly drank pint closer to her mouth for yet another unpleasant gulp.

Bloody America, what with their disgusting beer and smaller pint sizes – why the hell did they decide a pint should be 16 fluid ounces instead of the customary 20; imbeciles the lot of them. Perhaps, the United States should have remained under British rule at least then they'd have decent beer and rightly sized pints.

Pushing aside her aggravation, Hermione quit nursing the watered down liquor and downed the rest of the glass in a quick motion before signaling to the bartender.

"Another."

The man took the glass and puts it to the tap before bringing her back a newly filled glass. The bartender – a harsh looking man who reminded her of a less greasy and, admittedly, more handsome version of Snape – attempted to make conversation with the only female patron in scarcely populated bar; there were only five other customers each fatter and uglier than the last.

"British, eh?" Hermione inwardly cringed, she wasn't entirely sure if it was due to the nasally quality to his voice or the stupidity of the statement. "How you finding the beer here compared to across the lake, ma'am."

"_Pond_, across the pond," she corrected without much thought and shrugged at the question. "Terrible. After all, you know what they say about American beer, don't you?"

"Na, can't say I do."

Hermione nodded, as she absently tapped the tip of her capped pen against the wooden bar, "It's a bit like making love in a canoe."

At his raised brow and ever present look of confusion, Hermione elaborated, "Because they're both fucking close to wat– have you seriously never seen that," she paused, moving her fingers flippantly, trying to grasp at a word to properly describe the show, "_production_. I thought all Americans had seen Monty Python at some point or another."

"No, can't say I 'ave, ma'am."

"I assumed it was a necessity in growing up, no matter where said growing up took place. I suppose not…"

She trailed off the and the bartender shook his head slightly before walking off to his left in favor of messing with his outdated flip phone, leaving Hermione to her weak bear and thoughts.

"_Fuck," Hermione screeched in the phone as she brought her iron rod down on the particularly ghastly looking version of Albus Dumbledore._

_Taking off into a jog, Hermione cursed, not for the first time, her dampened magic. Why had she thought avoiding sleep for two days to work on the tablet a viable sacrifice? The war had taught her better; she had become complacent in the peace of her life and it had lead her here, with barely enough magic to summon an iron rod and wandless._

_Brightest witch of the age, her arse._

_Yet, another thing to curse her complacency for: she had left her wand beside the tablet when she heard the ruckus taking place in her sitting room. The ruckus as it turned out was an old mentor, enemy and flame. Not a particularly fun combination, to say the least._

"_Hermione," Anthony asked._

"_Mione," Dean snapped, the sound of grunting and walls being broken echoed in the background, the call was a three-way one, as Anthony had called both of them once he got to his safe room – a salted cast iron panic room covered with sigils of nearly every monster in existence. _

_Neither Dean nor Hermione had the same kind of room in their own houses; Hermione's wards were made to keep everything from ghosts to vampires to skin walkers out of her home. While Dean and Tania had a series of portkeys that would take them to their own safe houses – a series of homes, Hermione had contracted herself, their foundations were crafted with enough salt to prevent ghosts and the support beams of the home had been carved up with every symbols warding against every magical creature the trio could find mention of and to be put frankly, it was a lot. _

"_Get to the library and salt yourself in."_

"_Oh, stuff it, Dean." She snapped back as she slashed viciously at the face of Dolohov before pivoting to the left in order to stab forward into the transparent abdomen of a her former lover, Samuel Rurncorn – a young man she met at nineteen and had began seeing on a physically romantic basis until he tried to kill her for the murder of his brother, a Death Eater who spied on the Order for a week before Hermione found him._

_Not a very pleasant man, not really. Great lay, though._

It had taken her nearly ten minutes to make her way to library; she had never been more grateful for the ghosts of witches and wizards not being able to use magic any longer, otherwise Hermione would have been up against two _very_ skilled wizards and single mediocre one.

Exhausted and wandless, Hermione would be hard pressed to continue a fight between the four for very long if they had excess to magic anyway. Without magic that were still dangerous, but Hermione found that she could easy mess them up with use of her fireplace poker alone.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Dolohov and Dumbledore both had taken to being ghosts like fish to water, so with or without magic, they were still a problem.

Regardless, when she had finally immerged into her library she had poured what was left her wandless magic stores into salting and warding the room as much as humanly possible.

"_I'm in the library." Hermione reported, her breath coming out in hard and labored pants, "Dean?"_

_A grunt left her fellow muggleborn's throat; Hermione and Anthony were forced to wait for a reply from the struggling muggleborn. The sound of landing feet over the phone forced Hermione's breathing to a halt._

"_Safe." Dean reported himself. "We got the fountain painting portkey; we're in the house right outside of Berlin."_

"_Thank Merlin."_

_Dean could be heard sending his wife to floo her parents to check on them. "Don't thank Merlin, thank the power of international portkeys; I know I am."_

Pulling a pile of bills from her pocket, Hermione dropped a modest tip on top the bar before shoving her still empty notebook and gnawed up pen into her purse. The witch quickly made sure that all her belongings were put away into her maroon handbag. Hermione tapped absently at the leather of the bag as she downed the small amount of beer left in her glass.

Standing, Hermione nodded in the general direction of the bartender, her action was rewarded with a smile plagued with yellowing teeth and tacky chrome fillings. Hermione restrained a shudder at the sight of the teeth – her parents would have throttled her if she ever did that to her teeth.

She slowly opened the cheap red door; allowing it to slam behind her.

It wasn't a good looking bar – not really – but it wasn't in a very good looking neighborhood either. It was the kind of neighborhood that had three pawnshops and no public library; a coal mine two miles out of town. The place was a few miles from her own town; the disappearance of Bates had brought her to the last town he had frequented – his home town actually.

Hermione ambled over to her car and buckled herself into the front seat. Hermione pushed the keys into the ignition; the witch listened to the car slowly purr to life.

Merlin, she loved her car.

Pulling out from the parking lot – if one could call the embarrassment of cracking cement and graffitied parking spots, an actual parking lot – Hermione clicked on the radio, allowing Van Halen to fill the air ways of her vehicle as she drove in the general direction of Bate's house.

"_Damn it," Hermione slammed her fist against the wood of her coffee table in irritation. "I can't believe I left my wand in my office…"_

"_Well, Miss 'I'm a master at wandless magic, Dean, I don't need a spare wand' that'll teach you not to listen to your friend De-"_

"_Dean, go eat a dick." Hermione cut him off._

_She could all, but hear Dean rolling his eyes over the line. "Maybe _you_ need to be the one eating said dick. Getting laid would probably make you less snippy, actually."_

_Scoffing, Hermione's jaw fell slightly, "Excuse me?"_

"_Shut up, the both of you!" Anthony snapped – causing both Dean and Hermione and slam their mouths shut. Hermione may be scary on a normal day and Dean could be terrifying when wielding a knife, but both paled in comparison Anthony when he was angry and done with dealing with the duo's incessant bickering. "Hermione, Dean do either of you know what's going on?_

"_This isn't the first strange occurrence, after all," Anthony continued. "Venus shifted completely to the left by five and up 1.5 degrees. Do you understand what I'm saying?"_

_All three were silent for a moment as dawning comprehension fell over Hermione._

"_Fuck."_

"_Fuck indeed; Venus hasn't shifted that much since those witches from the Scandinavian Academy for Sorcery Studies locked up Samhain a millennia or so ago."_

_Hermione's mind wandered to the Scandinavian school for a moment as she categorized all she knew about the school._

_The school was formed shortly after the Kalmar Union formed back in the late 13__th__ century in protest against Dumstrang's policy on muggleborns and the Dark Arts. It's located on the island of Hinnøya where it is said that the stars come down to kiss the horizon of the island like a long lost lover. It is not surprising that the most popular academic stream is astronomy, leading the school to produce the biggest number of astronomy masters and the most authors who write about the subject. The school has patented a particular branch of divination that correlates to the movements of celestial bodies and stars; the branch seems legit, as legit as Centaurs, the only kind of divination Hermione would ever acknowledge as holding even a grain of truth._

_Regardless, the school also produces a lot of sealers and binders, whose job is the bind and/or seal beasts or demons to the Earth. A group of them had sealed a very old demon, Samhain, at the cost of four of their coven and the magic essence of two more, leaving the two only a step above squibs._

"_But Venus isn't the only one." Anthony continued, "According to my contacts in Egypt, Jupiter's obit shifted four degrees downward and Mercury shifted half a degree forward."_

_Dean spoke up next, "This ghost invasion isn't the only strange happening either, remember the tornado in Italy a while back? According to Lucas – you guys remember Lucas, right – it wasn't just a weather issue, apparently the alpha of the Kappa was sacrificed by some big shot demon or something. It sparked a huge water spout, more than an actual tornado, and it seemed that it released _something_; Italy's magical energy department is distraught, guys, they can't find out what it was. They have the Grecian unspeakable looking into it as well as their own."_

"_There were those Tengu that procreated with a Kelpie to create a humanoid creature," Anthony provided. "Things are getting strange, Hermione… and the three spirits rising; it sounds familiar, _really_ familiar."_

_Hermione paused for a moment and scoured her mind for where she had heard of three ghosts rising before and groaned loudly._

_Dean lost his paper thin composure while Hermione knelt in front of the theology section of her intensive library, "Is that a good groan or I'm bleeding to death on my floor groan or a 'we're fucked' groan?"_

_Hermione began to pull several books from the shelf, placing them to her left, "A 'this is an event of the bloody apocalypse' groan."_

"_Oh good, because I thou- wait, _**what**_?"_

"_Are you sure," Anthony asked._

"_Hey – hey – hold up, nobody's sure of anything, until you guys explain what the hell you two are talking about."_

_Ignoring Dean, Hermione ran a hand through her messy locks as she finally moved all her books from the section of shelf; reveling a removable back holding religious scrolls and valuables she had collected over the years."I may have turned my back to such things, but that doesn't mean I don't know the lore like the back of my hand."_

_Removing the thin piece of wood, Hermione began shifting through the piles of scrolls, "After all you never know when you'll need to kill Satan."_

Pulling out her Zippo lighter as she sat on the hood of her Cadillac, Hermione lit up the tip of her cigarette.

The parking lot of the church she had pulled into a few moments prior was illuminated by yellow tinted street lamp alone. The bad lighting caused the puffs of grey smoke leaving her lips to mimic the yellow twinge of the lamp's radiance. She huffed in deeply and allowed the smoke to leave her lips in clouds of sickly yellow before the haze disappeared into the air a few moments after the initial drag.

She doesn't even like smoking; the taste is far too vile and bitter for her taste buds. She doesn't like the feeling either, the feeling of filling her lungs with tar as she turns them blacker and blacker with every inhale.

Absolutely dirty habit, she mentally acknowledged, it's not one she tended to indulge in every day, though. She only does it during times of stress or if she was really, _really_ drunk, because nothing goes with whiskey like a freshly cut Cuban cigar, brilliant, really.

Draco used to smoke, she remembers.

He used to charm his cigarettes to billow out multi colored smoke. Occasionally, he would convince her to go out for a smoke with him and they'd watch as the gold-red-green-purple smoke snaked its way against the sheer dullness of the grey cloud cover. It was morbidly beautiful; in fact, he had actually left her a book filled with smoke color changing charms after his death, that and the Malfoy fortune and manors, but that's neither here nor there.

She missed Draco, actually, if she's being honest; he was an arse, granted, but he was one of the better members of the Order.

Finishing her cigarette, Hermione dropped the fag on to the asphalt. She slid down the hood of the classic car and put out the still burning cherry with the sole of her size 8 boots. She paused as she weighed the pros and cons of simply going home and looking into Bates' disappearance at a later date, but instead she pulled her pea coat around her a little tighter as she moved forward, towards church.

_Digging through the scrolls, Hermione opened each other carefully as not to damage the aged gospel._

"_Cast from him, Azazel, who so carelessly lay with women and caught them the way of swordsmanship – Nope, not that one," Hermione mumbled as she put the Watchers scroll to the side. The next one was a prophecy of sorts, talking about a boy kind with a heart of gold; she didn't give it much mind as she continued onward._

"_When Jesus observed their lack of understanding, he said to them, "Why has this agitation led you to anger? Your god who is within you and…" Hermione trailed off as she read silently to herself. "But their spirits did not dare to stand before him, except for Judas Iscariot. He was able to stand before him, but he could not look him in the eyes, and he turned his face away. Judas said to him, "I know who you are and where you have come…" Hermione trailed off once away thoughtfully and put away the shabby scroll._

_She continued this with both the Epistle of Barnabas and the Essene Book of Revelation; she put aside the Sophia of Jesus Christ for later reading after they solved all this, but put all the other scrolls away when she finally found the one she was looking for._

_The Apocalypse of Paul._

_The original scroll was taken into the Vatican library, but Hermione had easily been able to simply replicate the scripture for her own personal reading._

"_Fuck," Hermione cursed as she pulled the phone back to her ear from where she had placed it on the ground on top of the many piles of books she had moved. "We have a problem – you're positive that it was Venus, Jupiter and Mercury that all moved, right?"_

"_I'm positive," Anthony replied._

"_Dean, have you heard anything about ancient demons immerging from the woodwork lately?"_

_The wizard seemed to choke on his words for a moment before crashing could be heard in the background of the call. Hermione recognized it as the sound of books and papers hitting to the ground, hard, Dean was never the most organized of people, so paid it little mind._

"_Yeah," he replied, "I got reports of Amadeus, Beelzebub and another one, calls himself, Levi though, so we can't be sure on an actual name. I got Bell and her hunter contacts on it; last I heard they were able to take out Levi, but Marcus died when they tried to take out Beelzebub."_

_Hermione swore colorfully, "We'll deal with that later; we all got three ghosts, right?"_

_After a joint sound of confirmation from her two friends Hermione continued, "Ever hear about the three witnessed, Anthony? It's in the Apocalypse of Paul."_

"_Vaguely familiar."_

"And three witnesses came_." Hermione began to read off the scripture, "_The first spoke, saying, 'was I not in the body the second hour? I rose up against you until you fell into anger and rage and envy.' _I got Dolohov, it makes sense, I guess, he was the Death Eater the fought me the hardest… and you, Anthony, you got Terry, who while not a Death Eater, fought against you taking up arms in the Order with us."_

_Dean frowned, "Say you're right; couldn't this just be the doing of some monster or demon? Like Samhain, maybe we're reaching the year that the creature can be released; maybe he's already released? What then?"_

_Hermione sighed, "I don't know Dean. All I know is that there's more:_ And the second spoke, saying, 'Was I not in the world? And I entered at the fifth hour, and I saw you and desired you. And behold, then, not I charge you with the murders you committed_.'_ _We've all slept with at least one person who wanted our heads for killing their family members or someone like that." _

"_No need to drag up dirty laundry, Mione, but you're right," Dean conceded with a sigh, "there was this girl I met a few years back… name was Veronica, I think, illegitimate daughter of Alecto Carrow, though. Wild lay for a very cruel and creative young lady. She was one of my ghosts." _

_Anthony didn't bother sharing his, but Hermione and Dean knew him well enough that they could venture a guess at who it was. _

"_Regardless, uhm, the third spirit, thing, said '_did I not come to you at the twelfth hour of the day when the sun way about to set? I gave you darkness until you should accomplish your sins._' I got Dumbledore, guys… I guess it was a leader who turned a blind eye to our actions or endorsed them?" _

_Anthony finally piped up again, "I got Harry, mate, he let me dispose of Hannah after she did this to me." Hermione could imagine him gesturing towards himself as he sat in his muggle wheelchair with disfiguring burns marring his face and body. _

"_Which no one can blame you for," Hermione replied evenly, "What about you Dean? Is it following the pattern or?" _

"_Neville, I got Neville." _

_A pause, "Excuse me?" _

"_Neville found out who killed my mum and the rest of my family and gave Yaxley to me about a week before _the_ battle._"

Opening the heavy, oaken doors, Hermione stumbled into the entryway of the church. She looked over the sparse foyer; she took in the white walls and the worn leather upholstery of the two chairs in the right corner and the thin table between them. On top the weathered table was a thin vase with a single lily and three old magazines.

Passing through into the main area, Hermione looked over the rows of pews and kneelers. Her eyes caught sight of the beaten cover of a fraying bible; the sight caused her legs to stop of their own accord. Hermione closed her eyes and took a long breath of the stale air.

_It smells like elderly farts_, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Dean murmured in her head.

She stifled an immature snigger.

After making her way to the confessional, Hermione ran her hand down the paneling of the adjourning cupboard like rooms before slowly opening the door. The witch plopped down onto her knees in the closed off room and looked forward; no one was in the other room.

Good.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," she began. "My last confession was over a decade ago, 12 years – I've only done this one and I was… fifteen, I think. And God, have I done some extremely messed up things since then."

"_Are the ghosts gone yet," Anthony asked, no doubt worried about his wife who was visiting her family whose home was treated much like Dean's various safe houses – salted foundation and warded beams._

_Hermione replied as she walked softly though her house, the spare wand from her library in hand, "I think so, there aren't any more close spots left in my house." _

_Turning the corner, Hermione nodded to no one in particular, "All clear; you might call around just to make sure."_

"_I'll take your word for it," Anthony mumbled, the opening of the cast iron door could be heard through the wireless connection of their phone call. "I'm going to floo over to Leanne; call me if you find out anything else."_

_Anthony hung up the phone, leaving Dean and Hermione to continue their call._

"_Austin just emailed me," Dean piped up, "its all clear where he is. Same with Ellen and Missy."_

_A moment passed, the sound of typing could be heard and indistinct mumbling._

"_Damn it!" Dean cursed for several more moments in quick succession, "Jed and Olivia are dead, Bates is AWOL, probably dead as well… same with Wilkes. Otherwise all our contacts are accounted for."_

"_What about Singer?"_

"_He hasn't gotten back to me yet, but according to Michael, he's alright."_

_Hermione cursed quietly, "Are you sure Jed is dead?"_

"_Yeah," Dean replied, "Luca was the one who found him; why?"_

"_He was doing a job for me, coven of demon-witches outside of Santa Barbara. His son was on a job not too far, crossroad demon collecting early – is his son okay?"_

"_I guess, I don't keep track of the lad, I'm afraid…" Dean trailed off, "Tania wants to talk – call me if anything comes up, alright?"_

"_Yeah, sure."_

Stepping out of the confession, Hermione felt slightly better, like a small portion of the ever present burden was lifted from her shoulders. However, majority of the guilt and grief still weighed her down like a stigma of murkiness and gloom.

Hermione rolled her shoulders as if to let it fall off her back, but like always, the action yielded her no relief.

Walking past the benches, she cast the statue of the crucified Christ one last parting glance, before leaving the hall completely. She quickly began to cross the parking lot as she contemplated pulling out another fag, if just to relieve some excess stress.

The flutter of wings stopped Hermione in her tracks.

A pause.

Hermione brought her gaze across the bare parking lot until she stopped at the figure of a man standing beside her car.

He was the kind of man who's tall, lean and dangerous. He stood at attention, as if waiting for someone or something – no doubt, her, as he was standing beside _her_ car. His body was hard and taunt; his limbs slender, sharp like the blade of a sword, the appearance only intensified at the sight of the ridiculous platinum blond hair that shown like a beacon in comparison to his dark clothing and equally dark skin.

However it was not his physical features that she paid mind to; no, her eyes were too affixed to the sight of the six dusty, russet wings closed behind his back – reminiscent of wetted potato skins.

It was _him_.

She had her wand out before she reached the car.

He raised a thick brow in response to the thin vine wand pointed at him. His lips twisted and her bared glistening, white teeth in the weirdest of smiles.

"Hello, Hermione Granger," the man – angel? Was he an angel?

Regardless, the man's voice was a deep timber with a plunking quality, the undertone of a _banjo_? Biting her lip to stifle the hysterical giggle that threatened to fall from her lips, Hermione waited for him to continue.

When he showed no signs of doing so, Hermione continued for him, "Who are you?"

"I," he gave her a small smile, "am Jehoel."

"And _what_ exactly are you, 'Jehoel'?"

"I am an angel of the Lord."

"Doubt it."

Slowly all six of his brown wings unfurled and the wind surrounding the duo sped up, swirling around them. Hermione pulled her jacket closer and kept a firm grasp on her wand, the tip pointed at the wannabe angel.

There was no such thing as angels, after all.

The wings finally released fully; a flash of indiscernible light lit up the russet wings brilliantly, Hermione winced in response to the overwhelming light.

The wings began to roll back into him as the light gradually began to dissipate.

Hermione was left gapping; ever an articulate, bright witch, Hermione replied with a single word.

"_Fuck_."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, please, it helps me update faster.<strong>

_**Still looking for a BETA**_!  
>Anyone who wants to BETA for me, <span>please message me<span>.  
>I'll put <em>your OC into this story<em>, if you'd be so kind as to share some of your time to go over my work and correct any mistakes.

Have a nice day!


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